The Andromeda Strain

[Fianna]

A rare Sunday upload, but a timely one.

[url]https://sfdebris.com/videos/special/andromedastrainnovel.php[/url]

Your taste (or tolerance) for tons of procedural detail is definitely the main factor in whether you can get into a Michael Crichton book or not.

[Beastro]

Your taste (or tolerance) for tons of procedural detail is definitely the main factor in whether you can get into a Michael Crichton book or not.

It was never an issue of tolerance for me as a kid. His and Clancy's novels were my bread and butter after the age of 10, even if most of hat was talked about flew over my head.

The bit about perfect contingencies gong awry reminds me of this military reality:

https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Squaddy_Proof

An example in, iirc, the British Army was when a supposed wonderful eyepiece for rifle scopes was designed and fielded, only for the army to discover that the rubber wasn't strong enough to deal with service life. It wasn't wearing out from the elements too quickly, nor was anything wrong with the rubber itself for its assigned task.... the problem was it was too chewy.

Soldiers were going through them like mad sitting around with their rifles at the ready, but bored unable to use their hands, so they would nibble at the only thing within their reach they could toy with, which were the rubber eyepieces right by their mouths. In no time at all they'd rip them apart, rendering them worthless as proper eyepieces then ask for new ones before repeating the process over and over depleting stocks rapidly and wasting money.

The solution, iirc, was to develop a rubber that wasn't as optimal as an eyepiece, but one which was hard enough to not be appealing enough to chew on.

[Coyote's Own]

Not Occupation of Poland, Disultion and incorporation of Poland. At the time of writing of 20 Leagues, Poland did no exits. It had partitioned between Russia, Austria and 1772, 1793 and 1795 (Austria did not take part in the middle one). Poland as a State only reemerged after WWI.

Verne's original conception for Nemo was Polish Freedom Fighter. However his publishers were afraid this would anger Russia (Frances ally at the time), so it was changed his nationality changed to that of Indian fighting against Britain (who were Frances's traditional enemy).

[Philistine]

In a moment of rare algorithmic genius, the Background video for Cabin in the Woods popped up in my YouTube recommendations after watching Part 2 of Andromeda Strain. "Genius" because, after re-watching Chuck's full review of that film, I was struck by the thematic congruence between Cabin's Facility and Strain's Projects Scoop and (especially) Wildfire in this story. I assume the connection was made by random chance on the YT algorithm's part, because none of the other recommendations prominently featured highly-secret underground bunkers full of people prepared to enact the unthinkable to stave off the unimaginable, but even so it seemed pretty cool.

I read Andromeda Strain 20-25 years ago, and watched the film shortly after. I don't recall much about the story, but I do remember being disappointed by the adaptation - that the movie was in some way not as good and/or smart as the book. I don't remember what the difference was that put me off, though - so now I'm contemplating re-reading and re-watching.

[Beastro]

I read Andromeda Strain 20-25 years ago, and watched the film shortly after. I don't recall much about the story, but I do remember being disappointed by the adaptation - that the movie was in some way not as good and/or smart as the book. I don't remember what the difference was that put me off, though - so now I'm contemplating re-reading and re-watching.

I haven't read the book yet, but appreciated the movies subdued, professional manner. The people in the film are about the closest thing to real scientists I've seen on film and certainly on the opposite side from the TV CSI types.

[Kinky Vorlon]

I saw the movie many times on A&E, before it became the cultural epicentre of inbred rednecks. Read the book as well but I don't remember much about it as I was in my teens. The movie version is rather lifeless, the only character who shows any real emotion, charisma, wit etc is the patient they bring back from the town.

[Rocketboy1313]

I read both "The Andromeda Strain" and "The Hot Zone" as part of a summer reading list back in high school (that year they had let the science department choose the summer reading list rather than the English Department).
They serve as a good complement to one another.

Apparently Dominic Noble did a review of the film adaption of this book too, if you want to look at a super faithful adaptation from back in the day.
https://youtu.be/H64yYqwgeVk

[Rocketboy1313]

There is an important topic brought up in Episode 3.
The idea of administering antibiotics prior to surgery prone to the sort of stupid, "whoops, I got distracted" issue.

There has been a remains a push for the use of checklists in surgical procedures. To make sure each item that needs to go into the patient and each item that must come out get where they need to go.
However, Doctors have been resistant to use checklists because they see it as an insult to their intelligence, "I don't need to write things down."

[Maximara]

The issue with the printer always bothered me - one of the key things at the time, was redundancy. In addition to the bell why not have a flashing light - planes of this time (early 1970s) had both audio and vision cues that something "bad" had happened.

Too many of Crichton works have what I call 'designed by dimwits' plot elements as well as idiot plot elements.

Take the Westworld movie for example

First, the idea of a self replicating program was in 1949 and the first actual computer virus was in 1971 so the idea of a "disease of machinery" wasn't as off the wall as the scientists made it out to be. Its like these scientists hadn't even heard of a computer virus

Second, the issue of who created this virus was never answered (not even in the sequel Futureworld which implied the robots "woke up"...which didn't' really make sense) The disease model would explain the initial problems moving from one resort to the next. A computer virus would also explain why all the robots went nuts at the same time. For that to happened the failure had to be engineered - something the current TV series quickly acknowledges.

Third, the idea the control rooms would not have any manual method of opening the doors if the power failed is beyond stupid.

Fourth, why in the name of sanity would you have robots with a charge that could last 12 hours? Defeats the whole idea of the ability to cut robot power.

Finally, while they explained how the guns (in theory) couldn't kill a guest (and the novel described a scene where the gunslinger alters his gun to bypass this) they didn't explain how the primitive weapons in Medieval world and Roman World couldn't accidentally kill a guest.

Oh YYI, Futureworld gave us the details of the carnage: more then 50 guests killed and 95 staff members killed or wounded.

[Kinky Vorlon]

Crichton's main point with his work is that humans are flawed, and now matter how marvellous our technical wonders, they will always fail because of the human element.