Word: researchers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mazière. The brooding huge monoliths of Easter Island, 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile in the Pacific, have held an abiding fascination for generations of archaeologists. Mazière has new theories about the men who produced them and why, though the impact of his research is somewhat blunted by the fact that boulder-size chunks were lifted from previous work by an obscure Capuchin priest named Father Sebastian Englert...
...ANDROMEDA STRAIN by 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...
Thankfully, fiction is more entertaining than life. The Andromeda Strain tells of how a group of super-scientists (at least one of whom is a toned-down version of J. D. Watson) set to work in a secret, five-story, underground bacterial research center in Nevada--part of "Project Wildfire." Their object is to identify and neutralize a lethal virus brought back from the upper atmosphere by a Scoop satellite that has crashed in the middle of the Arizona desert. Since the enterprising virus multiplies at a giddy rate, they must, of course, do in the thing by the time...
...used to play in 19th century fiction now is handled by the space program (both novelistically and cinematically, for Kubrick's 2001 held much the same appeal). Where Melville and Dana used to fascinate their readers with descriptions of rigging and trade routes, Crichton delivers mini-lectures on space research, micro-biology, and biochemistry. Meanwhile, names like Wald and DeBakey weave in and out of the narrative. Most of this material is, of course, quite elementary; some will probably find it tediously so. But, for those of us who can only struggle unsuccessfully with the structure of hydrocarbons...
...comment by Robert Skidelsky, a research fellow of the British Academy, was typical of the feeling among the other members. "I didn't come primarily for the program. I was more interested in meeting what I thought would be people of eminence and talent from different countries, and in being exposed to American life," he said...