Book Review | The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Published by: Avon Books on September 1, 1969
Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, Thriller
Pages: 327
Format: eBook
Source: Borrowed from the library

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Summary (from Goodreads): The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to collect organisms and dust for study. One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona. Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town’s inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.

Review: I really enjoyed this one. I was looking for a pretty science driven novel involving some sort of an outbreak or something alien and this book definitely fit the bill. My few years in university for medical laboratory science made understanding all the jargon a lot easier. If one is unfamiliar with heavy science then this might book may seem dense and hard to get through.

The Andromeda Strain is told from the past and is done document style. It is definitely a plot driven book and the characters are very secondary. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between any of them.Regardless of that fact, I found myself routing for the characters to come to a conclusion about what this alien mircobe could be. Speaking of the microbe I liked how interesting it “attacked” humans. I’ll keep the “how” to myself as to not to spoil it for anyone wanting to pick this up.

I love how futuristic the technology was portrayed for that time period and how this could potentially be a worst-case scenario in our future! Definitely recommend for science lovers.