Confused Critique - The Andromeda Pain

Crichton has always had a raw-deal from hollywood. His roll of honor reads : The Lost World, Sphere, Congo, Eaters of The Dead, Timeline. A vaccum cleaner would suck less. So when i read a positive review on the movie version of "The Andromeda Strain", i started hunting for the book and one fine saturday, i found it on attu's rack and took it home. The blurb, as always, was interesting. "A true story that could have changed the face of mankind" or some such is what it said.

The start was explosive. An unmanned space-craft, A small village, A virus outbreak, Recovery team tries to communicate it to Base camp, but gets it before they could complete transmission. Perfect. All high-funda codenames are exchanged between the military folks all night through and team of world reknowned scientists are picked up. Not one. Not two. But five of them. Enough characters to lineup an all-star cast. Good. The lead doctor of the team sort of hates the youngest for some reason. Ah, Character conflicts ahead. Neat.

But crichton eventually forgets that he is writing a novel and not an article for the british medical journal. What follows is tonnes and tonnes of tongue-twisting medical names, their effects, their cures and if that wasnt enough, diagrams about their molecular structures, chemical make-up and full-length reports. Science always had this ability to put me to sleep since school and this was no exception. The book talks loads and loads about this highly-secretive underground research center ala "the hive" in "resident evil". Crichton takes us through the building to all the corners and painstakingly explains about every type of quarantine procedures in each level, and somewhere in between doing that, loses the plot.

If that wasn't enough, how the virus is destroyed is what that takes the cake. Now, people, our virus is one serious brat. It spreads through air and it causes your blood to coagulate and kills you, and if you are anti-coagulant, it makes you go insane and drives you to kill yourself. Eventually gets you one way or the other. Pretty scary, huh ?? So how does the virus get destroyed ?? Well, thatz a really complicated procedure. Just wait till you hear it. The virus mutates, becomes a harmless organism, and vanishes into thin air. Yes, One has to read through 300 pages to get to this heart-pounding finale. We owe a lot to the real life scientists who put their lives on the line, but crichton, maybe he should stick to bigger organisms like dinosaurs.

My cast (for all those who have read the novel): Stone - Ed Harris, Burton - Gabriel Byrne, Leavitt - Kevin Spacey, Hall - Ben Affleck.

Two points to note:
1. when the blurb reads "A story of two star-crossed lovers, from the hearts of rural india to the plush streets of colombo, in a war led by blood brothers, loaded with dynamite action", just check if someone is actually trying to sell you "The Ramayana".

2. Unless your girl friend is a practising pathologist, you can safely skip this book.