Symptoms of Crichton

A classic Crichton in both good and bad. an attention to detail as he splices facts of the real world into the fiction of his book. here Crichton conveys his cynicical, wary view of science & scientists, though much more diluted then the opinions voiced in Jurassic Park.

Crichton had a tendency to wander off into the background of his books, of their research, diving into a level of detail to the point of almost consuming entire chapters, the reader being threatened with losing their place in the story.

The ending is anticlimactic, spoiled by the fact that the characters speak in the past tense, reviewing their actions, revealing that the core threat of the story, The Andromeda Strain itself, and every other threat, are dealt with and pose no real, true risk, as opposed to Jurassic Park, where there is no characters reviewing their accounts, their actions. every page turned threatens to kill or injure them, with no indication they're safe.

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Great Story, Superb Narrator

The Andromeda Station is quite a fast paced book even though the story progresses quite slowly. The narrator does a fantastic job, I enjoyed this audiobook much more than the film.

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Dated but very enjoyable

Enjoyable story written around the time of the space race between Russia and USA and the Apollo missions

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Feels like a true story.

The era in which the book is set, and the way in which it is told from a.slightly retrospective angle makes it feel like the dramatisation of real events.

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Amazing this was 1969!

loved the performance and great story - bit overly academic in places but still a great listen

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Very enjoyable

I enjoyed the story greatly but disappointed when it finished, the ending was not that great a climax

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Gripping classic sci-fi from Crichton

Great old school sci fi - no dumbing down and a terrifying story to boot.
Good narration.

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Great book

David Morse is a very talented narrator that can inpersonate different characters extremly well.
The story is very realistic and scary for its believebylity (IF THAT THE A WORD) Crichton must be a very inteligent righter to be able to understand and relate scientific terms in a way that a normal person will understand.
Highly recomend this book.

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good book

good book but always wating for something big to happen but still would recommend this

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An Opportunity Missed?

There's no doubt in my mind that the Andromeda Strain is a clever idea, particularly when it's date of origin is considered. The book sets up this idea very well with David Morse's almost dispassionate narration setting bleak opening scenes and hinting at tension that surely had to follow. The description of the Strain's impact on one small American town is a genuinely powerful scene.

At this point though the author seems to almost switch modes. As he introduces the team being set up to investigate the strain he detours into detailed bios of each of the men's achievements listing scientific papers they have written and how their careers have developed. This unfortunately then set the tone for the rest of the book where I feel Crichton seemed anxious to demonstrate his research or knowledge to the detriment of his story. To be fair I now feel I have a better grip on the pros and cons of optical versus electron microscopes than before but that's not what I read fiction for and with Morse's rather dry delivery it was hard going in parts.

To be fair to Morse there were a number of aspects of the book that would have worked very well in print at the time but were not at all suited to the audio format. An example of this would be the lengthy rendition of the communications between the mission control teams where each short sentence was preceded by a timestamp like "Sixteen hours, forty-six minutes and twenty three seconds". I imagine this worked well in print, the reader could skim-read the timestamps, but in audio poor David had to churn them out in seemingly endless monotone. Other examples included computer communications with long serial numbers and control statements. Possibly this is on occasion where a version edited for audio would be better than the original. It's something I'd rarely suggest but here I think it would make sense.

That said, it is a clever story, albeit with what I felt was a less than satisfactory ending. It does require patience and the lengthy scientific tangents means that the story never develops at a genuinely entertaining pace.

Well that's my opinion. On the other hand this was of course the novel that established Crichton and the rest as they say is history. I do think that it's probably better consumed as a novel rather than an audiobook but I also wonder if Crichton was ever tempted to revisit the Andromeda Strain as I think the story could have developed so much further.

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38 people found this helpful