The Andromeda Strain by Michael Chricton

One of the few books I read last semester was The Andromeda Strain by Michael Chrichton. A Science-Fiction novel of about 350 pages in length, the Andromeda strain tackles extraterrestrial terror in a realistic, science-based fashion. Rather than having fifty feet tall fighting machines like those present in H. G. Wells’ War of The Worlds, this novel’s alien enemies are a deadly form of microorganism. You’re thrown into the thick of it when the first chapter opens. A military satellite crash site in the barren parts of Arizona and a town nearby that seemed to have lost all life because of it. A military team is deployed to scout the town in search of answers as to what came down on the satellite and wiped out the town. In the process, the team finds two soul survivors of the microorganism, a sickly addicted Peter Jackson and an infant Jamie Ritter. The rest in the town were killed almost instantaneously by blood clotting, and if not, they had gone mad and committed bizarre suicides. Once the military gains containment of both the survivors and the microorganism that caused such carnage, they call in multiple expert doctors and scientists to dissect the situation and the origin of the microorganisms in a top-secret project known as Wildfire. What ensues is a thrilling story of revelation, deadly microbes with ever-changing evolution, and a dive into the threat of nuclear destruction. Main characters Stone, Burton, Leavitt, and Hall navigate through the horror of this organism in a classic by Chrichton that is always worth a reread. Although some may find its ending to leave you with stagnant thoughts, I find it to be realistic, grounded, and fitting. Ultimately tying the whole novel together through Chrichton's use of language that makes even the most confusing of scientific terms understandable to the average reader.