Bugged by Outter Space
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN by Michael Crichton. 295 pages. Alfred Knopf. $5.95.
This small, highly mechanized volume has been timed as perfectly as the moment of Apollo 10's splashdown. It is as up to date as this week's man-in-the-moon headlines, as plausible as the current plan to place returning U.S. astronauts in bacteria-proof "biological isolation garments." The book's thesis: puny man, poised on the edge of the new world of space, runs a great danger of upsetting the old world of earth. Each space capsule re-entering from orbit in the unknown is a potential bearer of extraterrestrial organisms capable...