I’ve read lots of horror novels, and enjoy Stephen King’s stories but nothing I’ve read in the genre has ever gotten under my skin and unnerve me. Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain got me. I think the story got wrapped up too quickly, but the essence of the story really got to me, and seemed a little too believable.

When a satellite comes down and something on it immediately wipes out almost all the residents of a small-town three scientists from across the nation are gathered at a secret government installation to investigate the bacteriological organism, which may be a virus that could wipe out all of humanity.

The installation is locked down, and pre-programmed for a nuclear detonation to wipe everything out should the virus escape, and there is a ticking clock, because despite the fact that the town was locked down, it was not wiped out in a nuclear explosion of its own, meaning the organism could ride the wind to populated areas and kill everyone.

The scientists investigate trying to understand the situation, to determine its origins, if it’s a virus or just a microscopic organism, and things aren’t going to go well. They have to make their way to the most secure level of the installation before they can do their work, a time-consuming process that prepares them for every virus and pathogen known to man.

It’s a tense, fast-paced read, and races to its conclusion, which comes about fairly quickly, though Crichton does plant the seeds for it early on in the tale as the organism begins to adapt.

The idea of an extra-terrestrial pathogen or virus arriving on Earth is pretty horrifying, and has real-world analogies like when explorers first arrived in the Americas and practically wiped out the indigenous peoples with diseases they hadn’t encountered before. It’s all too real, and one wonders with all the satellites that have gone up and come down, and other space missions if something like this may have already happened and we just don’t know about it.

And if it hasn’t happened, how long before something like that does?

In the novel, that delivers an ending that seems to put space programs on hold, I don’t think that’s something that would happen in real life. It’s risky, but the search for knowledge is often worth the risk. Our entire species? I don’t know about that, but we shouldn’t be afraid to step out into the unknown, no matter how scary it is.

And extra-terrestrial viruses are scary, and Crichton writes it so believably. I can’t wait to see what happens in his next book, when he returns to his John Lange pseudonym, and delivers The Venom Business.