Word: books
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Michael Crichton would probably not be selling as well as it is, if it were not for the nation's current narcissistic delight with its space program. Dealing as it does with a research satellite that returns to earth lethally contaminated, there has rarely been such a right book at such a right time. Only two months ago, I remember hearing someone's garbled version of the proposed Apollo recovery that had our trio of astronauts stepping onto the Hornet and then shaking hands with President Nixon before being packed off into a world of saran-wrapped sterility...
...better go down and take a look"), Crichton's reader is sucked into the kind of Saturday afternoon fantasy that used to be the staple of movie house matinees during the fifties, and still shows up with welcome regularity on all those Million Dollars Movies. Nevertheless, the book is unbelievably suspenseful. Crichton is a master at keeping the reader one step ahead of his brilliant-but-sometimes-obtuse scientists. It is painful to watch their ignorance lag behind your own understanding; reading this book becomes one of the most cogent arguments for taking an Evelyn Wood course I've ever...
This novel's other basic appeal is much more telling. The Andromeda Strain is not really science-fiction in any strict sense. The "science" it treats is too commonplace--even if sophisticated--and it isn't really that speculative. Instead, this book represents a kind of "government-fiction"--the most recent development in the genre of the Washington Novel...
...Strangelove was the logical extension. Well, The Andromeda Strain is its biological brother. By mixing fact with Crichton's only too probable fantasy, his novel locates itself in a never-never world of secret government installations. It is the revelation of purported government secrets that make the book so compelling. For example, if a contaminated satellite falls within the Soviet or Eastern Bloc territory the United States had decided not to inform the Russians of what had happened. "The basis of this decision was the prediction that a Russian plague would kill between two and five million people, while combined...
...started talking about the masses, and as soon as he started using that word ? which is from their book, not ours ? I knew he was a Commie...