The thrilling story of an alien virus that kills in minutes and the military and scientific effort to understand and contain it before it can spread across the globe!
Published in 1969
Brent: 4 stars. An unbelievably propulsive central idea and the beginning of the novel is unforgettable. Unfortunately it slows a bit as the book goes on and the ending isn’t very satisfying - but I still couldn’t put the book down and read the whole thing in one day.
Cody: 3.5 stars. Compelling central idea that reads almost like non-fiction (in a fun and interesting way). The abrupt conclusion drags it down a little, but still a great read.
Here's the setup:
A US government program is sending satellites with scoops into orbit, looking for alien organisms that can survive the void of space. When one of the scoops comes down in the Arizona desert two soldiers are sent out to pick it up. But as they get closer, they realize the signal has moved - someone has already picked up the object and moved it into the tiny town of Piedmont. As the two men pull into town, bodies line the streets. In less than five minutes they are dead too.
The government is forced to mobilize Project Wildfire, a top-secret emergency response protocol. Four of the nation’s most elite biophysicists are summoned to a clandestine underground laboratory where they must race to understand and contain the crisis. But the Andromeda Strain proves different from anything they’ve ever seen - and what they don’t know could not only hurt them, but lead to unprecedented worldwide catastrophe.
Hugonauts' Thoughts:
The central idea is unbelievably propulsive and the beginning of the novel is unforgettable. Unfortunately it slows a bit as the book goes on and the ending isn’t very satisfying - but we still couldn’t put the book down and read the whole thing in one day.
The most unique thing about the book is the narrative style - it’s framed as a top secret document detailing real events, and that very much helps make it feel real, engrossing, and a little transgressive that we get to read it. This framing, and the beginning of the book in particular, definitely feel like the best parts of military SF (smoky rooms and steadily escalating phone calls up the chain of command).
One watch out about that narrative style - the book includes a number of pages of maps, printouts from military computers, comms transcripts, and pages of top-secret documents which are really not meant to be read line by line, but add to the realistic feeling. But on audiobook they read all those words out verbatim and it’s pretty brutal - so this is a better book to read in print than audio.
As an example of the scientific depth, the core concept is based on a proposed answer to the Fermi-Paradox - that it's far more likely to encounter single-cell or viral organisms first because they are much more likely to evolve and develop. That's just one of a wide number of interesting scientific ideas and theories that are raised throughout the book. As a testament to how real the science felt, there is a bibliography at the end - and we felt like I needed to check if the work he’s citing is real. Its not, but could have fooled us!
Related Books
If you loved this one, you might also like:
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
An adventure novel about an alien object flying into the solar system that almost reads like non-fiction about something that just hasn’t happened yet.
Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
A scientifically rigorous story about the early years of colonizing and terraforming Mars.
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
The book is even more fun and propulsive than the movie - a wild ride through a dinosaur amusement park gone wrong that feels like it could be really happening on a private island somewhere.
Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The wonderful follow up to Children of Time explores the implications of an extraterrestrial virus as sentient life.
The Hot Zone - Richard Preston
A terrifying, fascinating non-fiction book about the early response to the Ebola and Marburg viruses that reads like a thriller.
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