The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain has gone through quite a few incarnations. This, the original novel, the 1971 film, a 2008 TV mini-series… and even a 1992 experimental film (The Strain Andromeda) where the original movie was re-edited in reverse, shot by shot.

I’ve not yet seen the original movie, but I was fairly impressed with the TV series as far as 4-episode television goes. From what I gather, the 1971 version is definitely worth a watch. I’m sure I have it kicking around somewhere – as I did with the novel for long enough.

There’s a copy of the book in a box under the house somewhere. I bought it years ago, but never got around to reading it. I then saw it in a charity shop in Perth, Western Australia earlier this year and picked it up. That copy is now sat here, finally finished, in Perth, Scotland.

It’s one of Michael Crichton‘s earlier works and published in 1969. The science inside is therefore a mixture of “out of date” and “second-guessing the future”. In honesty, I think he does a decent job of fusing the two. The list of references at the end is enormous, as is the number of in-text scientific asides.

The plot is fairly simple – a meteor lands, someone finds it and the population start to drop like flies as a result of some kind of disease. Instead of turning into a huge disaster story, the author instead concentrates on the efforts to determine what is causing the deaths (and how two people survived) while – to a large extent – ignoring the world outside of the secret testing facility where all the science takes place.

What’s surprising is that there’s no real drama. Everything is so clinical once the science part starts that there’s little to emotionally involve the reader. From a science point of view, it’s fun to try and second-guess things and there are a couple of “problems” with the hermetically sealed bunker that are obvious plot hooks waiting to be brought to life. However, when they come they do seem weak.

The way the book changes once the “action” moves from outside to inside is a shame, but perhaps that’s because I’ve been brought up on more action-oriented fare such as Outbreak. More of people running around and explosions. This is the direction the aforementioned mini-series took in its adaptation of the source material.

It’s still a good book, if you like your science fiction based heavily in science fact (and a large dollop of conjecture). I enjoyed it, and it’s easy to read but it just doesn’t seem “complete” the way some of his later books were. However, it was an early novel and led onto greater things so it can be forgiven.

And there are no bloody dinosaurs in it.