The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 science-fiction novel by Michael Crichton about a team of scientists investigating the cause of a spaceborne disease that kills nearly everyone in a small desert town. They find an extraterrestrial form of life that causes rapid, fatal clotting of the blood, and make some disturbing discoveries about the project.

Quotes

• On the cover of the file was stenciled WILDFIRE, and underneath, an ominous note:
  
  THIS FILE IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET.
  Examination by unauthorized access is a criminal offense punishable by fines and imprisonment up to 20 years and $20,000.
  
  When Leavitt gave him the file, Hall had read the note and whistled.
  "Don't you believe it," Leavitt said.
  "Just a scare?"
  "Scare, hell," Leavitt said. "If the wrong man reads this file, he just disappears."
  • Day 2: Piedmont; Chapter 9: Flatrock

• For years it was stated that men had forty-eight chromosomes in their cells; there were pictures to prove it, and any number of careful studies. In 1953, a group of American researchers announced to the world that the human chromosome number was forty-six. Once more, there were pictures to prove it, and studies to confirm it. But these researchers also went back to reexamine the old pictures, and the old studies — and found only forty-six chromosomes, not forty-eight.
  Leavitt's Rule of 48 said simply, "All Scientists Are Blind."
  • Day 3: Wildfire; Chapter 12: The Conference

• Houston: Scoop, Houston Projection Group has confirmed orbital instability and decay ratios are now being passed by the data trunk to your station.
  Scoop: How do they look, Houston?
  Houston: Bad.
  Scoop: Not understood. Please repeat.
  Houston: Bad: B as in broken, A as in awful, D as in dropping.
  • Day 3: Wildfire; Chapter 12: The Conference
  • Recorded dialog between NASA Houston and Scoop Control about the apparently malfunctioning Scoop VII satellite.

• As Stone was fond of saying, scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and your instruments, but in the end your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.
  • Day 3: Wildfire; Chapter 20: Routine

• He [Stone] often argued that human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.
  • Day 3: Wildfire; Chapter 20: Routine

• The biologist R. A. Janek has said that "increasing vision is increasingly expensive." He meant by this that any machine to enable men to see finer or fainter details increased in cost faster than it increased in resolving power.
  • Day 4: Spread; Chapter 22: The Analysis

See also

• The Andromeda Strain (1971 film)