The Andromeda Strain on steroids. One of the best syfy books I’ve ever read. It’s the story of an alien race infecting our solar system with a virus, the protomolecule, that not only kills, it consumes whole populations and creates intelligent, and most unfriendly, mutations.
Set far in the future, mankind has invented the Epstein Drive, allowing incredible space craft speeds, and because of this, most of the solar system has been populated. The UN is calling all the shots, but war is threatening to break out between Earth and Mars.
It starts out as a detective story, where an ex-cop named Miller is hired to track down a missing girl Julie Mao. He finds her, all right, but she’s the first victim of the protomolecule. A side story develops, where the crew of a space ship, manned by captain James Holden, receives a distress signal from another ship, and upon investigation, discovers the crew is missing and the protomolecule has taken over the ship. It turns out that Julie had been locked in a room while the crew fought the infection, but she later escaped.
When MIller tracks her down on Earth, good and dead, he can see that she’s infested with the infection and he realizes that Julie’s demise is part of a much bigger scenario.
Julie’s father is the head of a giant tech corporation, Protogen, that has also discovered the protomolecule. His company, running an experiment, infects the entire population of Eros, a large asteroid with a population of thousands. Holden and his crew happen to be on Eros when this happens, but escape. They later team up with Miller, and they all start to realize that Protogen has opened a Pandora Box that threatens the entire human civilization.
Much more happens, laying the ground work for future episodes. What really sets this book apart from typical syfy though, is that, apart from the great plot, is that Corey is such a good writer. You can actually visualize the characters, and feel their motivations and frustrations. It’s quite refreshing to see this quality of writing in the syfy genre.
The book has also been made into a TV series, that is quite good. I’m looking forward to much more of this great syfy series.