The Andromeda Strain is a book that is worth reading. It is exciting and full of surprises. So exciting, in fact, that you might not even be able to put the book down once you have started. It takes extraterrestrial life into a new direction of exciting possibilities. It makes you wonder if what we have to worry about are the things we can't see. It has many interesting turns and unexpected events.But some of the beginning and a few other parts of the book are slow reading and quite boring.This human story is of how five widely different members of a top-secret government research team combine intellectual forces to deal with the horrific results of an infectious biologic agent, which had been accidentally introduced into the small town of Piedmont, Arizona by way of a returning space probe that had been sent from Earth, killing all but two person. The team must find out what the nature of the infectious agent is, how it killed its victims, why the two extremely different survivors, a crochety old man and a two-month-old baby, survived, and how they can stop this agent before it is able to do any further damage. Although your enjoyment of this novel is not dependent on how much science you know and understand (although the more you know and are interested in, the more it definitely does help), it is dependent on how much you can tolerate as you follow along with the suspenseful story. The ending, is really good; it made me glad that I stuck with it to the end this time.

By Nicola Genesin