Techno-Thrillers discussion

October 2024 Book of the Month
Nominated, polled, voted, final. We got maybe 12 votes, a nice boost in participation.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (1969)


Publisher’s Summary
The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.

Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to collect organisms and dust for study. One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona.

Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town's inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.

I swear I read this a few decades ago. I swear I watched the movie too. I didn’t like something and wasn’t sure which it was. But, it is often ranked in the top 5 of all technothrillers … #2 on the Best Technothrillers Ever list. I just reread the book. It was a different experience for me. Better.

It still has a bit of … well it feels like the 60s. Kind of stuffy, overly rigid almost robotic sort of just-the-facts-ma’am 1-dimensional personalities you saw in government officials of that time. Like government characters in an old James Bond film, but not James Bond himself.

It was certainly good for the time. It arguably put the major threatening virus concept into the thriller genre. I did read The Satan Bug which was a few years prior, and more of a crime thriller than a technothriller. I’ll rewatch the movie. I think that’s what turned me off. There is also a series on Amazon that is about a decade old. Reviews are not great, but I may give it a shot. Is it really #2 best technothriller ever? You’ll have to decide for yourself.

Is it really worthy of #2 on the Best Technothrillers Ever list, as it is currently ranked? I say no. It isn’t even in my top 20. It holds a special place in the history of the genre, and Michael Crichton certainly looms large on the genre, but this book is not #2 of all time to me. Glad to hear your opinions.

Watched the movie tonight. I didn’t really care for it. It might have been interesting by 1971 standards, but not the drama seemed a little affected and little they said made sense until the translated to plain English. It had a stressful vibe.