For instance, nearly all the science and technology described in the novel are rather accurate descriptions of what was known and available at the time of its publication. Furthermore, Andromeda mutates rapidly, dramatically changing its biochemical properties.Ĭrichton wrote The Andromeda Strain while he was a graduate student at the prestigious Harvard Medical School, and his extensive knowledge in medicine and biology permeate the entire book. That is, even though it does not have genetic structure, proteins, or amino acids, Andromeda is able to process energy to replicate itself, just like any other living creature. The extraterrestrial organism, code named Andromeda, is on the fringe between being alive and being inert. In a high-tech laboratory in Nevada, the Wildfire team discovers that the responsible organism is a sulfur-based, bimolecular crystalline structure with no genomic constitution. The government deploys the Wildfire Team, a group of four experts from diverse scientific disciplines who must deal with the terrifying prospect of a deadly extraterrestrial biological infestation. For unknown reasons, only a young infant and a geriatric old man survive the onslaught. When a secret military satellite crash lands near the small town of Piedmont, Arizona, nearly everybody in the area dies instantaneously.

In this inventive book, Crichton explores a nightmarish but truly believable situation.

And perhaps with good reason, this year witnessed the publication of Michael Crichton’s groundbreaking novel, The Andromeda Strain (1969), which is rightfully considered the “mother of the modern techno-thriller”. But even though the narrative structure of what is known today as the techno-thriller was originally defined during the mid 1940s, critics and fans agree that the formal establishment of this genre took place in 1969. With the development of revolutionary weapons systems such as radar, missiles, jets, and atomic bombs, the war years appear to have ignited the imagination of several authors, who attempted to foresee the future of military technology. This type of “hard” science fiction became popular shortly after the end of World War II.

Such is the magnitude of this cultural shift that the techno-thriller is a new subgenre that has been established in order to categorize those novels and films that explore coherent speculations of modern science and technology. From time machines to spaceships that travel faster than the speed of light, the genre has almost completely been immersed inside the realm of fantasy. If you think about it, such films as those in the Alien, Matrix, Terminator, Star Wars, and Star Trek series summon truly impossible technologies and dubious scientific facts. Arguably, one of the problems with recent science fiction narratives is that they invoke more fiction than science.

The andromeda strain 1969