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Jul 07, 2011

Bird Brian rated it:

Everybody gushes over Crichton like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread (which, on further reflection is also overrated), and I'll admit that Jurrasic Park and ER were both well written and interesting, but they were also from much later in his career, when he had had over thirty years to perfect his craft. Andromeda Strain was Crichton's first big success; the one that punched his ticket out of medicine and sent him to Hollywood. That is a bit difficult for me to understand, because th More...

39 comments like (33 people liked it)

Jun 02, 2011

Richard rated it:

This was probably one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and so far the only book by Crichton. My rating is based on my reaction over three decades ago -- I seem to recall there were some parts that felt awkward, like they were written by someone trying to leap across the so-called "generation gap". But my teen self loved the book, so it gets the five stars. I have no idea whether I'd still feel as generous if I were to re-read it, but then I seldom re-read books anyway.
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2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 22, 2007

Russ rated it:

This book is all about the tension, not the payoff.

As with most entertainment, this book pulls you in by asking some questions. "What is it?" "How does it work?" "What happened?" While those questions are still being asked, this book is a fairly thrilling read.

If you don't like books that get too technical about things, though, this isn't the book for you. It's full of pages from government documents, computer readouts, and the like. More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Ed G rated it:

All I'm going to say about Crichton is that he has a knack for what I call the "miracle ending". In one summer I read Congo, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery and Sphere. I felt the same about each of them when I finished each.

He's a very good writer with captivating storylines, dead on science, compelling plot and in depth characters, but...I feel like he gets tired of writing the same story or can't properly tie things together a More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2009

Andrew rated it:

The Andromeda Strain starts fast in a small Arizona town where a mysterious military satellite has crash landed. When a dispatch team is sent to retrieve the satellite, something terribly wrong happens. At the site of the satellite, the dispatch team also sees a horde of dead bodies surrounding the satellite. As the dispatch team contacted a nearby military base to tell the news they are suddenly overcome by a mysterious unknown force, leaving them dead, and the communicator silent. The m More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Shayla rated it:

Such an expertly written book. You can tell Crichton has a background in medicine from some of the terminology he uses, the knowledge of biology is uncanny! Definitely makes the book unique in context to any others I have read. The cover and use of the galaxy name Andromeda in the book draws Sci-fi readers towards it definitely. I know this for a fact because I wouldn't of even gotten the book if it didn't have the cool cover of the earth and numbers matrix style and the space title.

Th More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 12, 2009

Annette rated it:

liked the beginning, thought the end was unbelievably anticlimatic.

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 27, 2011

jzhunagev rated it:

The Strain That Started It All
(A Book Review of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain)

Where others credit classic writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, I forever owe my first real taste of science fiction to Michael Crichton — long before I was even made aware that such a classification exists — and perhaps, as I think of it now, even more.

I still remember the day I borrowed Congo from the high school library during my junior year. What made me pick me the boo More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

Branko rated it:

Branko Galonja
Ms. Campanella
English 3H Period 2
8 December 2009
The Andromeda Strain

The genre of this breath-taking and awe-inspiring book is classified as a Science Fiction novel, one with many technological and medicinal terms. I chose this book because I am a huge fan of Michael Crichton and I love Science-Fiction novels. I love the feeling of mystery and fear throughout the books and love to see what the characters do More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jason rated it:

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 h More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Ryan rated it:

I was disappointed by The Andromeda Strain.

I was impressed to see that even as far back as 1969, Crichton had prepared all of the ingredients that would make up his later work. The Andromeda Strain challenges our faith in science. It ridicules the objectivity of scientists. Carefully managed systems fail elaborately to create suspense. A crack team is challenged under harsh conditions. Unfortunately, The Andromeda Strain reads like little more than a blueprint for Crichton's later wo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 13, 2008

Maddy rated it:

I think I read this when I was in junior high at my Dad's recommendation. I really liked it and ended up being a fan of Michael Crichton's books for a while. I've probably read most of them. I have to say though, for some reason, this is still my favorite by him. I started feeling like every book he was writing was written so it could be made into a movie. It was almost as if he was constructing shocking, suspenseful action scenes that would make a movie exciting while keeping dialog simpli More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 08, 2012

Donovan rated it:

Although this book is quite dated, there is that element (that Crichton is famous for) that is as valid today as it was back then when looking at how humanity would respond to certain situations and the morality associated. This is a classic story and was made in to a movie around the same era it was written. It has its dry moments, but over all it is not a bad read.

Plot ***Spoilers***
When a military satellite returns to Earth, a recovery team is dispatched to retrieve it; during More...

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Jan 14, 2012

Helynne rated it:

I have heard this book criticized as being too scientifically complex for the average sci-fi reader. That may be true, but who cares? This chilling story of a deadly virus from an extraterrestrial missile accidentally set loose in a small Nevada town is such an exciting read and has enduring for so many decades that no reader really cares if he/she really comprehends all the scientific data or its reliability. The virus has killed everyone in the town but an old man and a small baby. More...

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Jan 12, 2012

Kaph rated it:

So I decided to give Crichton another go. I was optimistic. There is no movie of this one (as far as I’m aware) and I do enjoy a good space epidemiology premise. What can I say? I was right, solid 3. Also, look up ‘page-turner’ in a reputable dictionary and you will be directed to this book. Bloody impossible to put down, almost irritatingly so. I read the last chapters in a kind of frustrated mania, aware I had things to do but also accepting of the fact that they were not getting done until I More...

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Jan 02, 2012

John E. rated it:

This, the first Michael Crichton novel I read, came my way during high school, through a path I no longer recall. As an adolescent with a capable mind but a tendency to self-doubt and rebellion, I was not the most diligent student, nor was my school that demanding (despite being better than practically any other public school in the city). Outside of school, too, my pursuit of various interests was rather skipping and dilettantish rather than dedicated. I was, then, only acquainted with, not wel More...

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Dec 16, 2011

Samantha rated it:

Ohmigosh!!! That was one of the sickest(as in coolest, not in terms of illness) Crichton books yet!

At first, I assumed it was gonna be good, considering I had already read quite a few other books by Michael Crichton {Jurassic Park, Prey, Next, Timeline, Pirate Latitudes & Rising Sun}. Jurassic Park was by far the best. I've loved the movie since I was about 5 and decided to read the book last year when I found it at a local Friends of The Library store. I automatically found a new fav More...

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Nov 21, 2011

Jessica rated it:

Not good! I have given Crichton's non-JP books a solid chance now, I just really don't dig his writing style. I find the fake documentary style obtrusive, since he's always adding bits about "He recalled later that...", which is so less fun than just saying how the characters actually reacted in the time of the events. Also, this seems to be his only effort to build tension, things like "Later they realized that they missed this really important thing...", but, it's just anno More...

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Nov 02, 2011

Bev rated it:

It felt really good to get back to a book that I enjoyed reading. And it's good to know that sometimes one's taste does stay the same. Just finished re-reading The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton as another of my Birth Year Challenge books. This is Michael Crichton before Jurassic Park and before Prey. Naturally, some of the science doesn't hold up now. And the pacing may seem a bit slow for those used to more modern biological thrillers. But, even though I knew the plot--having both read t More...

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Oct 24, 2011

Holden added it

I found that the book the Andromeda Strain was extremely interesting. It was not amazingly written but that is because it used extremely advanced vocabulary and was written almost as a report. I found the plot very interesting though and I really liked how the story came together. The Odd Man Hypothesis in the book is quite interesting and seems almost realistic even though the statistics are most likely fictional. Throughout the book the is a very creative yet vivid imagery, I really found the More...

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Oct 18, 2011

Michael is currently reading it

The Andromeda Strain
By Michael Crighton

The Andromeda Strain: 1-269
Total: 269

Summary: The Andromeda Strain is about a new illness that has killed an entire town of fifty people in just one night. A group of scientists, known as WILDFIRE, has been formed to deal with such situations as new forms of life previously unknown about. This illness clotted most people blood in seconds, but then drove others insane until they committed suicide. The WILDFIRE team must study this organism in their secret la More...

1 comment like

Jul 16, 2011

Felix rated it:

In my last book swap of the trip I picked up this famous tale along with the next book from a backpackers in Livingstone, Zambia, in exchange for Sasha’s Shantaram and Steve's The Mote in God’s Eye. Reading it on the bus to my flight from Lusaka, and on the subsequent plane, I found the book quite difficult to put down. In a nut-shell, a nasty, possibly extra-terrestrial strain of a lethal virus is unleashed on a small American town after a returning space probe is cracked open. A group of five More...

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Jun 25, 2011

Jay rated it:

The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton.

I saw the movie, and then finally read the book.

I recall seeing the 1971 movie adaption of _The Andromeda Strain_ during my late teens in the early 1980s. While my memory of the movie is sketchy, the 1969 novel's style is reminiscent of many books of that era... The pacing plods along, with mock (real? simulated?) dot-matrix computer printouts inserted intermittently, and unfortunately [SPOILER AHEAD!] after a good deal o More...

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Mar 10, 2011

Sean rated it:

The Andromeda Strain is a science fiction novel about a chemical that comes to earth on a satellite and kills everyone near the crash-site. The satellite crashed in Arizona where it killed everyone in the town and then the scientists from a group called Wildfire that went to retrieve it. It seemed like aliens may have came on the satellite, but it turns out there was a chemical on it that it crashed with in space. This chemical killed people by coagulating their blood. There More...

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Feb 08, 2011

lconnor rated it:

As easy, entertaining books, Michael Crichton’s books are all about four stars. Some are a bit too much “thriller”; but some make you think. All are adventures and a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology.
The Andromeda Strain was my introduction to Crichton. I still remember the suspense of the deadly extraterrestrial microorganism and the failure of "fail-safe measures”. I remember several of his other thrillers: the historical gold robbery of 1855 in The Grea More...

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Dec 09, 2010

Lydia rated it:

Speculation that other life exists beyond planet earth is a touchy subject: some think it's ridiculous, others are fervent believers, others don't know what to believe. As many viewpoints as there are, an equal number of speculations are made as to the forms of these extraterrestrials. What if, rather than little green men, the visitors came in the form of a simple organism; an organism was deadly to humans?

The town of Piedmont,Arizona, formerly overlooked by most of the U.S., has More...

1 comment like

Oct 20, 2010

Harmonybites rated it:

It opens with an "acknowledgments" page claiming the "book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis." That crisis? Microbes from a crashed space probe wipe out a small town in Arizona, and team "Wildfire" is assembled to identify it and find a cure. A lot of the writing is very technical, filled with scientific concepts, reports, data, charts, graphs, figures, maps and even references in the back. The book was written in 1969, but as far a More...

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Oct 16, 2010

Talyn rated it:

I realize now that I had no idea what the hell I was getting into when I decided to read this book. At the time I was on a Michael Crichton streak, determined to read every piece of literature this amazing man had ever written, but I really bit off a little more than I could chew when I signed up to read this one.

In the beginning, it's all good, and has some suspenseful, mystery elements, but when Michael really gets down to it, you're now in for some very cryptic, wordy paragraphs f More...

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Oct 04, 2010

Leif rated it:

It's generally difficult for a science-fiction book to be believable, but The Andromeda Strain does a good job of making it feel like the events in the book could actually happen. This book spans five days and follows a group of scientists: Stone, Burton, Leavitt, and Hall, as they investigate a mysterious organism called the "Andromeda Strain" that was brought to earth in a government satellite. This dangerous bacteria killed all but two of the residents of a small town. As members More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2010

Tintin rated it:

Reading ebook. It starts out very fascinating and has a fast pace, though some parts like all the sterilization procedures are a bit of a drag. The ideas are fascinating though: Odd Man Theory, the possibility of highly intelligent lifeforms no larger than a flea, what defines life, your brain going against you. It's full of suspense as the reader is itching to know the secrets of the Andromeda strain all throughout. It seems to be perfect Hollywood material. Being from 1969, all the touted abil More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

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