The Andromeda Strain

Finally read Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain for the first time today on the bus back to Toronto. Blazed though it in three hours since the science was pretty easy for me to pick up due to a combination of a couple of years of university-level science classes and the book having been written in the late sixties.

So, overall, pretty great. I especially liked the "spoilers" the book kept feeding me - the science team tries something, and the book explains the error in judgment they just made and ominously calls it a big mistake.

Spoilers ahead.

What bugged me (pun intended) was the suddenness and unexplained...ness... of the ending. The wild strain and the lab samples suddenly mutate into the exact same harmless thing? What? How did the two now-separate populations undergo identical mutations at the exact same time? And then it conveniently wanders off into the upper atmosphere right before Crichton had to explain the actual biological functions of the thing. 

Maybe I'm being cynical, but that's an awfully convenient way to circumvent an actual ending to the book. Just... oh, lucky us, it's harmlessly gone. The end.

Makes me want to read Jurassic Park again.