A for Andromeda (Crest SF, R1205)

I like reading old science fiction novels because they give us a perspective on what people back then thought of the future and the things they hoped for and feared. This book is fun Cold War science fiction, based on a miniseries which I wish I could watch but the videos unfortunately aren't available. I may have to look up the 2006 remake. Actually, the first time I read it I must have been barely seven or eight (I was born in 1983). Someone had thought to edit an abridged children's version - which might sound peculiar but you have to give kids credit for being able to grasp complex ideas even if they can't read complex language easily. Or maybe it was intended for adult English as a Second Language readers. Anyway, it was one of my favourite science fiction novels and I was happy to find a full edition recently. Much better than Hoyle's other novel which I read, "The Black Cloud". The outline of the plot is a "First Contact"/SETI story. Essentially, however, it's a morality tale about how the lust for political and military power can lead to unwise decisions about the use of technology. I think most similar stories from this era would focus on technological weapons with overt power - i.e. the atom bomb or metaphors for it. This is something more insidious, a computer which subverts its human operators despite seeming like an innocuous calculating machine, perhaps an advanced version of the Golden Records that we sent out on the Voyager probes. Most of the characters are pretty stereotypical, including the hero John Fleming as a hotheaded young genius. Even though Judy Adamson is fairly minor as a player in the plot, she's more interesting as the Ministry of Defense's spy with a troubled conscience. The character of the humanoid Andromeda only appears in the latter half of the book. She falls into the science fiction category of half-alien/-mechanical persons discovering their human side, and I happen to like that sort of thing too. The only major complaint I have about it is Hoyle and Elliot's biological howlers, but as a biology grad student I'm used to that from science fiction novels written by physicists. The sexism toward female characters (the only one granted the courtesy of being referred to by her surname and not being called "girl" is a crusty, butch old biochemistry professor) is expected since it's from the early 1960s...half a decade before we saw female officers on Star Trek: TOS.

I actually saw the TV series when I was a child. It was an amazing thing for me, it altered the way I looked at the world and the universe. The book is good, but the TV series was better. There are two main characters in the book. Dr Fleming and Andromeda. There also a female doctor Dawnay and others but I have to draw the line somewhere. The story starts with Fleming, a radio astronomer, detecting an intelligent signal from space. It is discovered that squeezed in between the simple signal is an enormous amount of information. When decoded it is shown to be the plans for a powerful superconducting computer. OK obviously it looks like Contact ripped some of this off. So the govt decides to build the thing. They find that there is extra data which is intended to initialise the computer. After it is turned on the pace really starts to pick up. Slowly communication is establised. Then it finds out what we are made of and creates a living creature (well tells the humans how to make it), then eventually after a very suspicious suicide (a young girl seemingly hypnotised electocutes herself on two bars that project from the computer). The next thing we see is that the computer has analysed this girl and gives the instructions to create a new living creature , which turns out to be a clone of the girl. They christen her Andromeda. Now the pace picks up. Always the scale seems to be expanding. The computer's influence is soon national, then global. Fleming becomes more and more convinced that it is evil. But you never actually know, and you don't know if Andromeda is human or something else, it is not certain what the purpose is ... but there is a purpose. My appreciation of the book was influenced by the TV series so you might find it dry. There was a sequel called "Andromeda Breakthrough" which was nowhere near as interesting, though it did finally resolve the issue of "what was the motive" and "is it evil".

Plot summary: a radio signal from the Andromeda "nebula" (galaxy) is a plan for a computer. The computer, when built, asks the scientists questions about what elements they are based on, etc. It then tells them how to build a cell from scratch, which multiplies until it becomes a dog-sized amoeba with a lidless eye and primitive brain. They hook it up to the computer as an input device. The computer then gives them instructions for building a human, who functions similarly. She helps the British build a great anti-missile missile and the British get all excited about becoming a great power again. But, of course, there is one scientist who knows what is really going on...the alien intelligence is using them, not vice versa.... This is a great story, in part because it is so realistic. Andromeda is about 1,000,000 light years away, so two-way communication with someone there would take too long. But to send instructions for building something to talk to is better. This inspired Carl Sagan's Contact, which is longer and more complicated but inferior in inspiration. The characters are also fairly believable: the protagonist bucks all authority and is an alcoholic; the protagonist's girlfriend deceives him and feels terrible about it; the "scientists" who became mere bureaucrats decades earlier in their lives, and the earthy female biologist contribute to the background. Another thing that makes this book so fun to read is that it was published in 1962, so all of the computer talk is very outmoded. It's so charming to read an author who believes he has to explain to the reader what a computer program is!

I have to say something about this remark: "It is a sad fact that Fred Hoyle--astrophysicist, cosmologist, nucleosynthecist, panspermicist and generally polymath extraordinaire--is not better recognized as one of our greatest sci-fi authors." Yes, Hoyle was both a scientist and a science-fiction writer--and a popularizer of science as well, but I don't see that that makes him a polymath, particularly since his science-fiction, though entertaining enough, had no especial literary value. In the sixties, his science-fiction was very well known, nearly as well known as that of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. I'd guess that most of his stuff is now out of print for two reasons: 1) Genre fiction tends to be ephemeral, and 2) Hoyle's scientific reputation plummeted (deservedly so) as he continued to promulgate his long-since discredited "steady-state" theory of the universe and to embrace such fantasies as the space-spores "theory" of the origin of life, with no credible evidence or argument to support either. Anyway, "A for Andromeda", adapted from a sixties British television series I've never seen, is great fun. I loved how its headstrong, heavy-drinking scientist listened to Webern to show how "advanced" he was. (Hoyle's lectures about music in "October the First is Too Late" are equally endearing precisely because they are so naive.) I'd love for this to put be put back in print.

It is a sad fact that Fred Hoyle--astrophysicist, cosmologist, nucleosynthecist, panspermicist and generally polymath extraordinaire--is not better recognized as one of our greatest sci-fi authors. Without a doubt, this book is one of the best sci-fi novels I have ever read. (FYI, I also like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Lewis Shiner, William Gibson, Philip K. Dick and H.G. Wells). All I can do is briefly outline the plot: An eccentric and somewhat egocentric radioastronmer...computer scientist detects a signal from the constellation Andromeda on Britain's largest radiotelescope that is obviously an intelligent message. Once decoded, it turns out to be a design for a highly advanced super-computer. Once built, the computer designs recombinant human DNA and grows highly advanced "human beings" with which it communicates in its apparent intent to take over the earth. Due to cold-war politics and the obvious advantages to the government of having a supercomputer, and not least to the protagonist's difficult personality, the government authorities won't believe him and refuse to pull the plug, moving this brilliant and exciting story inexorably along to its superb and tragic ending. The characters are complex and mutlifaceted and the story is a real thriller. Highly recommended.