Imagine walking into a town that normally populates 48 vivacious residents, and discovering 46 non-moving non-living bodies. There are no guns, no bombs, and no visible pre-manufactured weapons of any sort. A few minutes later death strikes, observations can no longer be made, and a black curtain falls.This is what happened to two Army recovery personnel in the town of Piedmont, Arizona (population 48). They set off to retrieve SCOOP VII, a military satellite sent to bring back alien microorganisms. The satellite did its job, it brought back a microorganism; something its six predecessors were not able to do. The microorganism SCOOP VII brought back was lethal, killing almost everybody in its path, except an old anemic man and a crying infant. Four specialized scientists: Jeremy Stone, Charles Burton, Mark Hall, and Peter Leavitt; are plucked from their everyday lives and placed in the secret building of Project Wildfire, located in Nevada. The five-floored facility was built entirely underground, with each floor more sterile than the one above. Here the four scientists work with the microorganism, now code named Andromeda strain. They try to discover how the agent kills, what it is composed of, where it came from, and why those two civilians survived. The scientists conclude their work on the fifth floor, when disaster strikes. A seal is broken which sets off an automatic nuclear explosion, designed to destroy any microscopic threat to society. The scientists have only a few minutes to disable the bomb, and finally attempt to answer all those questions. Attempting to describe this book is analogous to illustrating a first kiss. There are too many feelings and emotions in a melting pot; it is impossible to filter out just one or two. Captivating, exciting, and terrifying lie on the surface skin of the melting pot. The author, Michael Crichton, uses science and technology in such a way that even an avid scientific teen...
