The Andromeda Strain

by Michael Crichton

A crisis is the sum of intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored.

These considerations lead me to believe that the first human interaction with extraterrestrial life will consist of contact with organisms similar to, if not identical to, earth bacteria or viruses. The consequences of such contact are disturbing when one recalls that 3 per cent of all earth bacteria are capable of exerting some deleterious effect upon man.