Engagement:
Genre:
Science Fiction
Published:
1969
Page Count:
295
Where to Buy:
The Andromeda Strain
#
Content Ratings
Moderate Themes
The novel explores scientific protocol under existential pressure, the danger of military interference in biological research, and the possibility that life utterly alien to our own biology could elude all containment.
Moderate Violence
Mass civilian death from an alien microorganism is depicted at the outset; an autopsy and biological decay are described with clinical detail; the horror is biological rather than violent in a conventional sense.
Synopsis
A military satellite crashes in an Arizona town and nearly all of its inhabitants die within minutes; a team of scientists is rushed to an underground biocontainment facility to identify and contain the extraterrestrial microorganism before it spreads. Written in the form of a government scientific report with technical appendices, the novel creates intense procedural dread from a threat that is entirely invisible. A founding text of the biological thriller.