The Andromeda Evolution - Daniel H. Wilson

 

   2019; 417 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the Andromeda Strain series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Techno-Thriller; Science Fiction; End of the World.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Something black was rising from the deepest jungle.  Something very big.  (pg. 7)

 

    Fortunately, after the near-disastrous Andromeda Strain episode fifty years earlier, the world was keeping an eye out for something like this, by means of a top secret endeavor called "Project Wildfire".  A response team is quickly assembled and flown down to the remotest part of the Amazon rainforest, to intercept and examine this rapidly-growing whatever-it-is (and quickly dubbed “the anomaly”) and hopefully determine what it is and what it intends to do.

 

    The team is multinational.  Its leader is Dr. Nidhi Vedala, born in the slums of Mumbai, but presently a professor at MIT and an expert in nanotechnology.  Dr. Harold Odhaimbo‘s specialty is Xenogeology; he’s been flown in from his home in Kenya.  Peng Wu is the People’s Republic of China’s representative; she’s a taikonaut (see below) and has an extensive chemistry background.  Then there’s James Stone, kind of a computer whiz, but here mostly because he’s the son of Dr. Jeremy Stone, who was a key player in the struggle against the Andromeda Strain all those year ago.  The final member is astronaut Sophie Kline, currently residing on the International Space Station, and who will supply laboratory support and relay communications to and from the expedition.  There is no Wi-Fi in the Amazon jungle.

 

    Besides its mind-boggling growth rate and incredibly remote location, there are already a couple other odd things known about the anomaly.  It is located right on the flight path where a Chinese space station recently fell back to Earth strewing fiery debris as it came down through the atmosphere.  Hmm, I wonder what Peng Wu knows about that.

 

    Stranger yet, the anomaly is located on the equator.  Not within a few miles of it, not “nearby”.  Directly on it.  The odds of that being a random event are …well… astronomical.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Andromeda Evolution is the 50-years-later sequel to Michael Crichton’s 1969 megahit The Andromeda Strain.  Michael Crichton died in 2008; his widow, Sheri, recruited Daniel H. Wilson to write this book, a daunting task since this was Crichton’s breakthrough novel, and his writing style is both technically persuasive and a thrilling page-turner.  If you haven’t read Crichton’s book, that’s okay, a synopsis of it is given as a backstory on pages 13-15.

 

    The book is divided into seven sections: “Day Zero” which serves as a Prologue; then the five days in which our heroes investigate and respond to the anomaly; and finally “Resolution”, which serves as a brief prelude to the Epilogue.  The chapters aren’t numbered, but Daniel H. Wilson gives them each a descriptive title, which clues the reader to what’s about to go down.

 

     I liked that Sophie Kline has suffered all her life from JALS (Juvenile Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).  On Earth this would relegate her to a wheelchair, but she’s never let it hold her back from her dreams, and in the weightlessness of outer space, it is somewhat of an advantage.  It reminded me of Robert Heinlein’s habit of endowing his protagonists with disabilities, and that’s a rare event in sci-fi novels.

 

    You’ll learn a smattering of Portuguese (“muito inteligente”) and Russian (“udachi”, “bozhe moi”).  I could suss out the first one, and thanks to Google, I know what the two Russian expressions mean.  The question of “terrestrial-or-extraterrestrial?” runs throughout the book, and I always enjoy that. The ability to do analytical chemistry in the Amazon jungle was fascinating, and I marveled at the canary drones and the robonauts.  The computerized language learning program was a clever way to overcome the problem of communicating with Amazon natives, and I liked the way the story addresses the “Fermi Paradox”.

 

    The ending is appropriately tense and exciting.  Yes, it’s over-the-top, but that's acceptable for a techno-thriller, as are a couple of dei ex machina (“You need an axe?  I happen to have an axe!”).  There’s a nice twist in the Epilogue, and the door is left open for more installments in this series.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Taikonaut (n.) : a Chinese astronaut.

 

Excerpts...

    There exists a certain class of event that can technically occur, yet is so incredibly unlikely that most laymen would consider it impossible.  This false assumption is based on a rule of thumb called Borel’s fallacy: “Phenomena with extremely low probabilities effectively never happen in real life”.

    Of course, the mathematician Emile Borel never said such a thing.  Instead, he proposed a law of large numbers, demonstrating that given a universe of infinite size, every event with nonzero probability will eventually occur.  Or put another way – with enough chances, anything that can happen will happen.  (pg. 20)

 

    Hopper nodded, pointing at the monitor.  “What are those faint speckles? All of them seem to be the same temperature, but cooling fast.”

    At his desk, Sugarman put his face close to his dedicated feed.  He spoke briefly into his headset to another analyst.  Finally, he responded.

    “We believe those are dead bodies, ma’am.  About fourteen of them.  Human.”

    “You can’t possibly confirm that, Airman.  Plenty of large primates live in that area of the world.”

    “Some of them are carrying spears, ma’am.”  (pg. 24)

 

“In a disaster … individual personality does not matter.  Almost everything you do is going to make it worse.” (Michael Crichton)  (pg. 93 )

    There’s hardly anything to quibble about in The Andromeda Evolution.  The text sometimes gives hints as to who in the expedition will live and who will die, but those are mostly chapter-ending teasers, and usually ambiguous.  Besides, even if you know the “who”, you don’t know the “when” and the “how”.

 

    There are only a couple instances of cussing.   I think I counted four.  It’s a mark of a skilled writer when he can thrill the daylights out of you without resorting to a plethora of curse words.

    The “Acknowledgements” section in the front of the book is written as if the events in the story were real.  I thought that was clever; sadly, very few readers will bother to read that section.

 

    Finally, I note that Michael Crichton’s name dwarfs Daniel H. Wilson’s on the book’s cover.  That’s a savvy marketing ploy, and justifiable since he conceived the series’ storyline and wrote Book One.  But still, he didn’t have much to do with this one.  This is the second book I’ve read recently where this situation arose (the other one is reviewed here), and I think it’s a mixed blessing to be chosen to continue a famous author’s series after he’s passed away.

 

    In the end, the key questions are:  1.) Was Daniel H. Wilson successful in copying Michael Crichton’s literary style?  2.) Was The Andromeda Evolution just as thrilling, scientifically speculative, and convincing as Crichton’s original?  3.) Would I recommend this book to readers thirsting for another Michael Crichton book?  The answers are: Yes, Yes, and Yes.

 

    8 Stars.  Fiction or not, I thought The Andromeda Evolution was a timely read, given that we mired in a seemingly unending pandemic and have to deal with a vocal and confrontational minority who hold that the proper strategy is “ignore it and it will go away.”