The Andromeda Strain

by Michael Crichton

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.
--back cover

• ISBN10: 0060541814
• ISBN13: 9780060541811
• Publish Date: 28 October 2003 (first published 12 May 1969)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 331
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

I’m trying to imagine reading this the same year Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Wow.

Fifty years later, it still feels so very plausible. The dry technical parts only make it more plausible. I like this kind of thriller.

I will say that, weirdly, I found this book comforting (I blame years of finding The X-Files comforting), but I had the craziest dreams while I was reading it. Things like: my teeth were broken. Or I couldn’t fall asleep. (Which is an especially diabolical dream once you’re already asleep.) So maybe Crichton was pulling some subliminal voodoo mind tricks, or maybe it’s just my own brain, but this is a great weirdly-comforting book that might or might not play tricks on your brain.