Library Appeal #16: The Andromeda Strain

OFFICIAL SITE: https://www.michaelcrichton.com

RELATED TOPICS: Thoughts on first suspenseful pages of “The Andromeda Strain” (1969), Library Appeal #15: Future GPX Cyber Formula 25th Anniversary Design Works, Library Appeal #14: Ronia, The Robber’s Daughter (Ronja Rövardotter, 1981)

Reading the praises (see above) and epigraph, I have to wonder “How can Crichton scare the hell out of me?” Of course, it could be an exaggerated metaphor for intense page-flipping.

What’s crazy is that the above entry that I made was in January 2021, meaning I purchased it around that time and I barely touched it. However, in the first few pages, Crichton has left me in suspense by littering the desert of Piedmont, Arizona with multiple dead bodies, leaving a ghost town. What we are conformed to suspect from the cover and the title is a major bacterial activity, a possible biological phenomenon from a space capsule (Satellite) upon reentry.

In 2024, I reached the idea of bringing a book or two to work just in case the activity was slow to a near halt. I would sit for around 10 minutes. It was a success; returning to Andromeda Strain, and having good lighting and concentration, the suspense increased. It was not a metaphor–it really was a page flipper (and I lose track of time during work)! A confidential mission by the U.S government as its setting, and I felt like I probing into something I shouldn’t. Because it seemed like a movie, and it seemed so convincing due to the author’s obsession with various branches of science and medicine such as pathology and neurobiology. For such a situation in need of such experts, real people that we can find, we expect that it’ll have to do with something that attacks the body in an unusual way. Crichton was a young man at the time, and in medical school, and had to redo the manuscript various times. It was a time around The Cold War and when NASA initiated its first moon landing. And one thing that did rule around that time is human rights and propaganda, especially the latter on governments possessing weapons of mass destruction. One thing Crichton liked to talk about was micro-organism entering our bodies for the greater good (ie: to clean cancer cells) and Strain seems to bring that idea close to reality cept it’s with body contamination. The “germs of outer space”.

He said that he doesn’t read fantasy and that his books are “non-fictional”. Strain, according to him, is a “technological crisis” such as divers experiencing decompression (i.e: Byford Dolphin disaster) or oil spills. Maybe cave collapses, but that’s more like a “geological disaster”.

I almost envy him. I believe in his profile that he explained how some of his books takes years to do and he really pressed that young generation should read. At the back of Andromeda Strain, there is a long list, a “selected bibliography” of unclassified documents, reports and references that formed the background of the book. It is well over 40, mentioning “The testimony of Jeremy Stone before the Senate Armed Services space and Preparedness Subcommittee”, “Unicentric Directional Routing”, “Metabolic Changes in Ascaris (a parasite worm) with Environmental Stress” and more. I am far from done, halfway even, not even one-third reached, and I won’t pretend that I don’t understand everything; I often wonder what is a way to approach sci-fi stories if you’re not used to it? With the possibility that you lack understanding of what you read? And HOW will you understand it when it seems like you may need more than a standard dictionary? You can definitely look up “enzymes” and “transplants” in the dictionary. Maybe pneumococcus; I’m sure we all heard of penicillin (and what does that have to do with a space probe, you wonder?)

I like books that make you curious. I actually said to myself, “This is scary.” I regained the effect, or the itch, of well-written books.