QUOTES - IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS AND ANALYSIS

1. The true aims of "Scoop" were to find new life forms that might benefit the Fort Detrick program. In essence, it was a study to discover new biological weapons of war. (page 44)
From the very beginning we see the book has an anti-military message. The use of biological and chemical weapons is now felt by most people to be morally inexcusable. Yet the U.S. government is attempting to develop those very weapons through the discovery of alien bacteria. This attempt results in the tragedy at Piedmont and the deaths of many citizens.

2. When Leavitt gave him the file, Hall had read the note and whistled. Don't you believe it, Leavitt said. Just a scare? Scare, hell, Leavitt said. If the wrong man reads this file, he just disappears. (page 83) The secrecy of the Wildfire Project demonstrates the power of the military and the Federal government. The possibility of someone disappearing because they read the wrong file convokes images of the Gestapo, or the Night and Fog decrees of the Third Reich. Crichton portrays a military that does not have to be accountable to the American people because the people have little idea what the military is doing. This secrecy results in tragedy.

3. When you think about it, Leavitt said we've faced up to quite a planning problem here. How to disinfect the human body - one of the dirtiest things in the universe - without killing the person at the same time. Interesting. (page 109)
Crichton delights in the paradox of man's simultaneous reliance and abhorrence of bacteria. Disinfecting someone kills of harmful bacteria, but it also kills much of the bacteria man needs to survive. The disinfection process is crucial to the study of the Andromeda Strain, yet it also creates new problems for the scientists.

4. Perhaps the most intelligent life form of life on a distant planet was no larger than a flea. Perhaps no larger than a bacterium. In that case, the Wildfire Project might be committed to destroying a highly intelligent life form, without ever realizing what it was doing. (page 116)
Another moral dilemma. Project Wildfire's only purpose is to figure out a method for destroying the Andromeda Strain. Yet, in doing so, they may be annihilating a life form from which much could be learned. After all, the Andromeda strain did not invade the earth; it was brought back on a government satellite.

5. The computer at Wildfire performed the endless and tedious calculations. All this, if done by manual human calculation, would take years, perhaps centuries. But the computer could do it in seconds. (page 225)
One of many examples of the glorification of technology. Each of these elaborate machines makes the scientists work possible. Yet even with all these advantages they almost fail to discover its nature and prevent its spread.

6. One is reminded of Montaigne's acerbic comment: Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves. Certainly the Wildfire team was under severe stress, but they were also prepared to make mistakes. They had even predicted that this would occur. What they did not expect was the magnitude, the staggering dimensions of their error. (page 237)
Montaigne's comment describes so much of what happens in the book. The scientists have attempted to expect the unexpected, anticipate what can not be anticipated. Part of their failure lies in their overconfidence due to the sophisticated precautions they have taken.

7. This was an organism highly-suited to its environment. It consumed everything, wasted nothing. It was perfect for the barren existence of space. (page 240)
Once the scientists understand the nature of the Andromeda Strain, they realize how very wrong their methods for trying to eliminate it have been.

8. 'Forty five seconds to self destruct', the voice said, and then he was angry, because the voice was female, and seductive, and recorded, because someone had planned it this way, had written out a series of inexorable statements, like a script, which was now being followed by the computers, together with all the polished, perfect, machinery of the laboratory. It was as if this was his fate from the beginning. (page 278)
This is another reference to the paradox between fate and chaos. The novel is a struggle to plan and predict, contain and control. The scientists attempt to anticipate every problem that will occur and have been given millions of dollars to prepare for every situation. As the novel progress, however, they find this to be impossible. Stress, fatigue, and other variables cause situations that could not have been predicted, Despite all this, as Hall is crawling toward the red button, he feels as though he is only acting out his part in some elaborate script. It's all fate. Considering everything that has happened, this realization is quite ironic.

9. And as for us down here, we understand what's happening now, in terms of the mutations. That's the important thing. That we understand. (page 283)
Stone's comment at the end of the book attempts to salvage some victory from what has really been a disaster for all involved. He could be referring to the maxim ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. Stone weighs the loss of lives against the contribution to knowledge that has come from studying Andromeda Strain. By the end of the novel the reader is left to question whether to latter is worth the former.