Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Andromeda Strain:
1. The Andromeda Strain, written over 40 years ago in 1969, remains a classic in the scientific-thriller genre. What is its lasting appeal? Does it have relevance to the 21st century?
2. Research some of the scientific technology—then in its infancy—mentioned in the book. Trace the development, for instance, of remote surveillance, voice activation, computer imaging, handprint identification, and biosafety lab procedures. Was Crichton a visionary...or were these inventions already on their way to common usage?
3. Are extraterrestrial microbes an actual, potentially serious, threat today?
4. What current governmental bodies are chartered to control epidemics—extraterrestrial or earthbound (biochemical or viral)? How equipped are we as a society to cope with a major epidemic? Have the dangers of a planetwide disease (of any kind) lessened or increased since The Andromeda Strain was published?
5. Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain shortly after the end of the Vietnam War. In what way does that war influence the tone of the novel? In other words, how is Chricton's personal attitude toward the military reflected in the novel? Does his skepticism seem relevant today...or outdated?
6. Jeremy Stone believes that human...
intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying.
Crichton's book explores the limits of human intelligence: its vulnerability to self-delusion and irrationality...it's capacity to destroy the planet coupled with its incapacity to control the danger...and its susceptibility to malfunction under stress. How does this idea (or ideas) play out in the novel? Do you agree with Crichton's/Stone's concept of human intelligence? Or is it overwrought?
7. Talk about the "Odd Man" hypothesis, which seems authentic and factual. Is there any truth at all to the theory, or is it purely fictional? If the latter, why the ruse to make it sound plausible? (Hint: look up "false document" literary technique.)
8. This novel might be viewed as a cautionary tale. If so, a caution against what?—disease preparedness, government secrecy, the limits of human intelligence, scientific and technological overreach? Something else?
9. Stone comments at the end that "the important thing is that we now understand." What exactly is understood?
10. Describe the moral dilemma the scientists face regarding the destruction of the Andromeda strain?
11. Does something like Project Scoop exist today? Should it exist? Is it possible for civilians to know whether or not something like it might exist? To what extent should government keep secrets from its citizens...as well as potential foes?
12. Michael Crichton was writing science fiction. Yet a contemporary reviewer wrote in 1969 (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that the author had convinced him—"with his copies of Government files and memos and computer-based output mapping, with his reference notes to actual scientific papers (not to mention the actual news that the crew members of Apollo 11 will be quarantined after their return from the moon)—that it was all really happening." Do you find this same degree of realism in Crichton's novel? Or has the novel become less realistic, less plausible after 40 years.
13. What about the ending of this book? Science fiction thrillers usually end with the defeat of either humanity or the extraterrestrial threat. Is the ending to The Andromeda Strain disappointing? Is it, as one reviewer puts it, "a series of phony climaxes" and "a huge biological cop-out"? Or does Crichton resolve his plot satisfactorily—with a conclusion that flows logically from events in the novel?
14. Watch two movies and compare them to Crichton's novel: The Andromeda Strain (based on the novel) and Contagion, a 2011 film about a (fictional) viral epidemic.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)