Written in 1969, The Andromeda Strain put Michael Crichton on the literary map. Not his first novel, this is his first attempt at trying to incorporate science into the thriller genre, and it received a great deal of acclaim upon publication, and has stood the test of time as one of his better known books.
And I found it largely uninteresting and dry.
I’m not sure when my tastes changed, but there was a period in middle school when I devoured Michael Crichton, Dean Koontz, Tom Clancy, and other (similar) popular fiction writers. About a month ago I stalled about halfway through Patriot Games (which I had read before), and I had to force myself to finish this book. Maybe it’s growing up, or maybe my tastes have changed: but the overly detailed writing styles of Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton don’t do much for me.
It’s not even that there’s too much science, here. I got my degree in a scientific field, and don’t mind reading fairly dense science fiction. It’s that the science here is….boring. This didn’t feel like a novel, it felt like the dry recitation of a microbiologist more intent on finding alien microorganisms than he is on talking about the annihilation of a town and threat to the human race.
It didn’t help that, towards the end of his life, Michael Crichton publicly aligned himself with the global warming deniers. While that may not be the worst political stance for a person to take, it’s hard to forget when dealing with a writer who spent his career writing about the cutting edge of science and technology.
Maybe I’d like his newer works (I’ve been itching to re-read Rising Sun) if I gave them another shot, but my experience with The Andromeda Strain moved his other books down my TBR list.
This has been reviewed twice before (CBR3 and CBR4), both reviews gave the book a 3.