The late Michael Crichton launched the techno-thriller genre with The Andromeda Strain, and Daniel H. Wilson (Robopocalypse) doesn't miss a beat in this follow-up, The Andromeda Evolution.
In 1967, a military satellite returned to Earth; soon after, nearly all the residents of the nearby town of Piedmont, Ariz., died. A team of scientists, led by Dr. Jeremy Stone, discovered the cause: an alien microparticle that, when inhaled, causes blood to coagulate and kill almost instantly. Dubbed the Andromeda Strain, it could not only self-replicate but mutate. The United States sponsored Project Eternal Vigilance and secretly monitored the planet for a new outbreak. For 50 years, all was quiet, until something inexplicable materializes in the Amazon rain forest.
The anomaly grows exponentially. Led by the U.S. military, a team of scientists is quickly assembled to explore it, aided by Dr. Sophie Kline, stationed in the International Space Station. Controversially, James Stone, son of Jeremy Stone, is included, to the dismay of the team's leader, Nidhi Vedala. Joined by Kenya's Harold Odhiambo and China's Peng Wu, this international team sets out to approach the anomaly. They're astonished when they first see it, and their disbelief is compounded by the terrible realization that the Andromeda Strain has evolved yet again. Is this an incident that can be contained, or is this the beginning of the extinction of the human race?
Wilson grounds this sometimes dizzyingly paced work of fiction in the realities of science, geopolitics and the exploitation of Brazil's indigenous people. Fans of the original, as well as new readers, will be swept up in Wilson's thrilling sequel. --Frank Brasile, librarian