I'm left feeling like Michael Crichton is the literary equivalent of Steven Spielberg. Roughly the same time period, and they both made hugely popular creative works with mass market appeal that also have some real depth. If you haven't read any Crichton, do yourself a favor and pick some up!

Here's the setup of Andromeda Strain (no spoilers, but putting in tags just in case you like to go in totally blank slate):

A US government program is sending satellites with scoops into orbit, looking for alien organisms that can survive the void of space. When one of the scoops comes down in the Arizona desert two soldiers are sent out to pick it up. But as they get closer, they realize the signal has moved - someone has already picked up the object and moved it into the tiny town of Piedmont. As the two men pull into town, bodies line the streets. In less than five minutes they are dead too.

The government is forced to mobilize Project Wildfire, a top-secret emergency response protocol. Four of the nation’s most elite biophysicists are summoned to a clandestine underground laboratory where they must race to understand and contain the crisis. But the Andromeda Strain proves different from anything they’ve ever seen - and what they don’t know could not only hurt them, but lead to unprecedented worldwide catastrophe.

And what makes it great (and what held it back):

The central idea is unbelievably propulsive and the beginning of the novel is unforgettable. Unfortunately it slows a bit as the book goes on and the ending isn’t very satisfying - but I still couldn’t put the book down and read the whole thing in one day.

The most unique thing about the book is the narrative style - its framed as a top secret document detailing real events, and that very much helps make it feel real, engrossing, and a little transgressive that we get to read it.

One watch out about that narrative style - the book includes a number of pages of maps, printouts from military computers, comms transcripts, and pages of top-secret documents which are really not meant to be read line by line, but add to the realistic feeling. But on audiobook they read all those words out verbatim and its pretty brutal - so this is a better book to read in print than audio.

The core concept is based on a proposed answer to the Fermi-Paradox. Essentially if we are going to encounter extraterrestrial life, it is far more likely we encounter single-cell or viral organisms first before complex life just because it is much more likely to evolve and develop. That's just one of a wide number of interesting scientific ideas and theories that are raised throughout the book. As a testament to how real the science felt, there is a bibliography at the end - and I felt like I needed to check if the work he’s citing is real. Its not, but could have fooled me!

Definitely my favorite Crichton novel - check it out if you haven't read it!