It was such a huge hit that the film rights were snapped up almost instantly and a hugely well budgeted movie was put into production within minutes of the deal being closed.
The publishers lapped it up and in 1969 the book became a huge international bestseller. He did everything he could to make it appear that his book was a true, scientific account of a dangerous accident that had occurred and only just been made public.
He included excerpts from letters, government reports and congressional records that he’d completely fabricated. He included a fake bibliography with references to non-existent articles in scientific journals. Among that particular book’s many virtues was its use of the “ false document” technique to make it seem like the events in the book had actually happened: car requisition forms, field reports – all the mundane trivia of spy work included for the sake of verisimilitude.Ĭrichton instantly rewrote his book, The Andromeda Strain, to encompass the technique, something he’s done with almost every single book he’s written since (cf Jurassic Park, in particular). Then, one day, he read The Ipcress File by Len Deighton (also adapted into a “movie you should own” starring Michael Caine). Based largely on his student lectures, it was about a killer virus from outer space that scientists had to stop from wiping out the population. He wanted to be an author, but despite his already having published some short stories under a pseudonym, no one wanted to buy the book he had written. BECOME A PATRON THROUGH PATREON.Once upon a time, there was a medical student called Michael Crichton. Music: Gil Mellé LIKE THIS ARTICLE? HELP ART OF THE TITLE KEEP GOING. Titles & Optical Effects: Universal Title/Attila de Lado The hums and beeps, syncopated and layered, abstract themselves into an ominous mechanical thrum – a soundtrack for graphic annihilation – as the truth dangles just beyond our reach. It’s also one of the first all-electronic motion picture scores.Īlong with this sonic language of devices, an onslaught of information is presented, superimposed, and mutated. The score, composed by artist, jazz musician, and composer Gil Mellé, is an innovative fusion of electronically generated sounds, traditional instrumentation, and musique concrète featuring buzz saws, trains, and bowling alleys, with dashes of white and pink noise. In Universal Titles/Attila de Lado’s colour-blocked sequence, a pulsating hum accompanies the revelation of the classified. This is the heart of The Andromeda Strain and its emergency. The title sequence gives us the facts, inflicting upon us a prevailing sense of dread, and we intuit, correctly, that despite the reassurances of the preface, something wholly intolerable has happened. Scholar Alfred Pockran observed that, "A crisis is the sum of intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored" in his work Culture, Crisis, and Change.