Book Review of Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain
Book Review of Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain"
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton is the book I have chose to read for my second book. The book is based on the idea that an extraterrestrial life form would likely not be in the form of a complex multi-celled organism like humans, but more in the form of single celled organisms. A single celled organism could be ten times more deadly then any complex structure; a single celled organism would be a bacterium or a virus. And if bacteria or a virus can live and flourish in the darkness of space with no light, water, spores, or oxygen imagine how much it could flourish in a habitat with all those and no vacuum.
Though the book is fiction it presents a very real danger. It is estimated that over 15,000 satellites orbit Earth, many from the Sputnik years. These satellites circle our planet just on the outside of our atmosphere. Could they possibly pick something up? The chance is actually greater you think. The fact is that a satellite could be struck by a meteor, as so happens in this novel, which is carrying an organism. The satellite is spun off course and back to earth where it lands... with the organism.
Michael Crichton predicted the Hot-zone twenty-five years before scientist entered it. The danger is very real in this technological era.
To help prevent such a terrible thing from happening, the government constructs a very sterile, very secluded laboratory. A team is selected, only the best in their field of course with the exception of one man who is the odd man. This team is called Wildfire and they are supposed to protect us from a biological threat, but really they are supposed to entrap biological threats to be used in warfare I think.
“What if there was a virus so lethal, it could kill people as quickly as they took a breath? What if it spared some people from instant death… But instead drove them hopelessly insane? What if the swiftest acting, deadliest virus ever known to man could be spread by no more then a gust of wind --- from the remote desert site of its first massacre to the busiest cities in America… And the world? What, if anything could stop it?”