The Andromeda Strain

by Michael Crichton, David Morse

audio cd

Published May 26, 2015 by Brilliance Audio.

ISBN:: 978-1-5012-1666-4

(174 reviews)

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.

55 editions

Ed reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Breve, ma molto intenso.

4 stars

Ho deciso qualche mese di ri-approcciarmi a tutti i libri di Crichton e sono partito proprio da qui: Andromeda. A esclusione di alcune parti un filo "troppo" (troppo tecniche e un filo troppo lente - ma comunque sempre nello spirito di Crichton) il romanzo è una bomba: parte in modo estremamente interessante e con un mistero che si districa in modo magistrale.

Il tutto con la solita competenza e il solito appiglio scientifico che contraddistingue i romanzi dell'autore.

Assolutamente da rileggere anche - specialmente - dopo che tutto il mondo è diventato il principale esperto in merito alle malattie infettive (post-covid).

Woordenaar reviewed De Andromeda Crisis by Michael Crichton

Gedachte experiment

3 stars

Net als Evolution van Stephen Baxter gelezen naar aanleiding van de Podcast Spacecowboys. Typische jaren zestig SciFi: bordkartonnen karakters en vrijwel alleen maar mannen. Ook qua techniek soms wat gedateerd, mijn Apple Watch kan meer dan de computers van toen. Qua onderwerp, besmetting vanuit de ruimte, best interessant en ook goed en geloofwaardig uitgewerkt. Qua plot valt het tegen, het is meer een gedachte experiment dan een roman, maar wel vlot leesbaar.

GenericHero reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Despite this book being written in the late 1960's it feels really modern and not to mention topical.

Antolius reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A must read for protocol geeks!

Good:
It reads more like a science thought experiment than a novel
Simultaneously fulfills the fantasy of meticulous disaster planning & everything falling apart
Makes scientific theories & data gripping

Bad:
Ending doesn't live up to the foreshadowing that lead up to it
300 pages of info dump is not for everyone
All the planning, preparation & procedures feel naive in 2020

brunosan reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Really great start, then slowly declined in quality to a quite bad ending

Pentapod reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

One of the author's earlier books (he's better known for Jurassic Park) it was a great, detailed look at the potential for space travel to bring back foreign infectious agents, and how the government might deal with it.

When a small town is the site of an unmanned probe landing and within hours it's discovered that everyone in it is dead, an emergency team of eminent scientists us assembled in an isolated underground base to identify and if possible find a vaccine or cure for the infection. Needless to say, a few things go wrong along the way.

Enjoyed the story, but it's definitely pretty dated in parts as it was first published in 1969. References to things like printer heads getting stuck, for example! Also not a single female character outside of background scenery. The ending also felt a bit forced and anticlimactic.

Sandra reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Meh. It was okay. I had unrealistic expectations of where this story was going... It went somewhere I wasn't all that interested in investigating. Oh well. It's not a bad book, just kind of, how do you say?... Boring.

bachya reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This book definitely delivers on the promise of "a hair-raising experience." Crichton is a master of creating suspense and holding secrets until a good way into the book.

That said, this was not one of my favorites. While the book started favorably enough, it lost its suspense about 200 pages in. While I thoroughly enjoyed the segues into biological studies, they tended to detract from the main story - so much so that once I was 5/6 through the book, I began to think, "He's running out of room to create a really smash-up ending." The unfortunate result is that I hardly felt any suspense during what should have been a climactic ending.

A good (and fast read), but definitely not the late Crichton's best work.

Bean reviewed The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Review of 'The Andromeda Strain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Andromeda Strain addresses a "worst case" scenario, where an unknown bacteria has the potential to wreak havoc on society, and a secret government agency has to deal with it before it gets completely loose.

The construction of the events and the execution feels very real - rather than an elite team of geniuses who use super spy powers to do whatever they want, you get a feel for the bureaucracy created by a government organization made to address an unknown threat, and the hodge-podge nature of a team of fallible humans. While I'm not up to snuff on my biochemistry, I'm willing to bet the analysis methods presented in the book (in extreme detail) would probably hold up to scrutiny.

While logically I understand the sequence of events that lead up to the ending and it does make sense, it still felt like a cop-out to me. As I was …