Or do they?Īn ubiquitous small town in the remote Arizona desert, a pleasant area of the late 1960's such a wonderful place is the setting as startled but curious, often bored people in Piedmont where nothing ever happens it does tonight, they look up in the dark sky something is falling, drifting slowly. A super team of science hotshots that makes Sheldon and Leonard look like middle schoolers takes it down to the line to pull us all from the brink. Seems an alien organism is making folks die – immediately. That’s an actual line from the book and describes one of the hero scientists’ attempts to come to grips with what was going on. True, some of the overly technical sections dragged and I recalled moments from HS when I daydreamed the lecture away but Crichton never let his lesson stray too far from the subject at hand – scaring the Heeby Jeebies out of us. Like a Jonathon Edwards sermon, his straight man delivery creates a technical tension that informs as it terrorizes. Crichton put his best bedside manner forward and patiently explained his biological horror story in a way that – made it scarier. But whereas Weir stepped it down for the rest of us with some laugh out loud humor, the good Dr. Similar to Andy Weir’s brilliant 2011 mega success The Martian, this is hard science fiction told by an actual scientist. Crichton put his best bedside manner forward and patiently explained his biolog Nine years before Stephen King’s heavy, genre defining smackdown novel The Stand, intelligent tall guy Michael Crichton quietly blew people away with his own hard science Big Bang Theory epidemic story. Nine years before Stephen King’s heavy, genre defining smackdown novel The Stand, intelligent tall guy Michael Crichton quietly blew people away with his own hard science Big Bang Theory epidemic story. Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town's inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks. One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona.
Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to collect organisms and dust for study. One of them falls The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. We're here to further your appreciation of this searing film: This is the untold truth of The Andromeda Strain.The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. As a work of science fiction, it isn't just intriguing - it's just downright cool. As a cautionary tale of hubris, technology, and destruction, it only grows more prescient with age.
As a story of humanity testing its physical limits, it is enthralling. The Andromeda Strain remains a classic for many reasons. As they struggle to contain the organism's rapid spread, they confront widespread panic, scientific gridlock, and the mystery that is the human body.
only to discover that it is an alien organism of uncommon virulence. A team of top scientists is assembled in a secret military laboratory to learn what, exactly, slaughtered the people of Piedmont. Devastated by illness following the crash of a mysterious satellite, only two of its inhabitants are left standing: an old man and a six-month-old infant. 1971's The Andromeda Strain begins in the rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico.