Michael Crichton
The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his first novel under his own name and his sixth novel overall. It is written as a report documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona. "The Andromeda Strain" appeared in the "New York Times" Best Seller list, establishing Michael Crichton as a genre writer.