The Andromeda Strain: A Critical Analysis Essay -- English Literature:

The Andromeda Strain A Critical AnalysisIn 1969 Michael Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain, a book that wouldforever expand the limits of a science fiction novel. Although writtenin 1969, it deals with very current issues facing the modern dayboilogical and even policy-making realm. Technically a science fictionnovel, the meticulously crafted spell is so intertwined with actualscience and technology that some have catagorized it as sciencefact. It is this naturalistic overtone that gives the impression thatperhaps, someday, events in the book could actually take place.Plot SynopsisThe book opens up with a fictional page of acknowledg workforcets statingThis book recounts the five-day archives of a major Americanscientific crisis. From this opening sentence, the author immediatelysets the tone as one of historical narration of events that actuallytook place. It is supposed to be a retelling of a scientific tradgedywith monumental implications. From here, the story the author relat esbegins.Five years earlier the United States government initiated a programcalled Project Scoop. The projects usance was to send unmanned spacecapsules into the earths outer atmosphere to collect samples andexamine them. The hope was that undiscovered biological agents couldbe found for potential use as biological weapons of war. Overall, theScoop program had been somewhat of a dissapointment until the seventhlaunch. It reentered the earths atmosphere over small town inArizona, where a team of two men were sent to retrieve it. Uponentering the town they found no signs of life and suddenly andunexplicably died themselves. This occurence set in motion somethingthe government had secretly planned for ca... ...ploy would be to grow anumber of microorganisms that would grow uninhibited in the vastnessof space. The alien race would send them out in random directionswhere they would drift eternally until finally reaching other life.Once reaching their destination, they would develop in to full organ,or organism capable of communication. They would inform the other raceof the presence of the other, and affirmable ways to communicate back.This seemed amusing to the more practical scientists, but it had to beconsidered a possibility with Andromeda.Overall, The Andromeda Strains extremely technical subject matter do it challenging to read, but informative on a level usually nottouched on by other science fiction novels. The plot itself as well asthe concepts conveyed in this book make it relevent to the modernbiologic world, even over 30 years later.