Andromeda’s ‘grey goo’ attacks again
The Andromeda Evolution
Michael Crichton, Daniel H. Wilson Harper
Grab the Purell. Fifty years after Michael Crichton published The Andromeda Strain, that deadly microbe has mutated again. Prepare yourself for extinction in The Andromeda Evolution.
Yes, the end is near — but not for Crichton’s brand. If you thought his death in 2008 was enough to stop another outbreak, you know nothing about extraterrestrial germs or U.S. publishing. Crichton isn’t just a late author, he’s a valuable commodity. Like John Hammond in Jurassic Park, Crichton’s publisher has scoured the land looking for bits of literary mitochondria that can be engineered into lucrative new books. Since his death, we’ve seen Pirate Latitudes, Micro and Dragon Teeth.
Now, streaking across the sky like a meteorite comes The Andromeda Evolution, a sequel written by Daniel H. Wilson in collaboration with Crichton’s estate. Wilson is a good choice for carrying the master’s work forward: He’s a robotics engineer, a writer of witty books about technology and the author of a silly thriller called Robopocalypse.
The Andromeda Strain, as millions of fans know, described the panicked efforts to stop the spread of an alien microparticle that first turned human blood to sawdust and then dissolved plastics. (Spoiler alert: Humanity survived.) For half a century, a mutated strain has floated harmlessly in Earth’s atmosphere while a special team of watchers maintained Project Eternal Vigilance.
When The Andromeda Evolution opens, a drone spots a metallic-looking shape growing up out of the Amazon jungle, “the whole of it gleaming like a beetle’s waxy shell in the rising midday sun.” Situated along the equator, this giant structure is located far from any development, deep in an area inhabited only by tribes who have never made contact with modern civilization. Mass spectrometry indicates the quickly swelling mutation is
“an almost exact match to the Andromeda strain.”
A scientist announces, “There is an alien intelligence behind this. We are facing an unknown enemy who is staging an attack over the gulf of a hundred-thousand years and across our solar system and likely the cosmos. This is war.”
Wilson suggests that a nuclear strike is problematic because the anomaly is on foreign soil, though such diplomatic awkwardness probably wouldn’t matter if we’re all dead. But the bigger problem is that the anomaly feeds off energy, which a nuclear explosion would provide in abundance. And that would lead to “the ‘grey goo’ scenario” that would kill everyone on Earth.
The Andromeda Evolution genuflects appropriately to the 1969 novel that instantly infected pop culture. With little genetic decay, Wilson replicates Crichton’s tone and tics, particularly his wide-stance mansplaining. And the pages — sanitized of wit — are larded with lots of Crichtonian technical explanations, weapons porn, top-secret documents and so many acronyms that I began to worry Wilson had accidentally left the caps lock on.
These various lapses may be irritating, but ultimately they don’t derail what is a fairly ingenious adventure.
The Washington Post