Book 5 for 2025! My goal is 30 this year, and I’m off to a great start.

Since I’ve been enjoying the “SF Masterworks” series like Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, I popped by the store a week ago to see if any others looked intriguing. The one that really caught my eye is the so-called Andromeda Anthology (1962/1964), by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot.

Probably the biggest draw for me was seeing the name Fred Hoyle! Hoyle was an astronomer and theoretical astrophysicist, and I was already familiar with his work through his very unusual 1957 novel The Black Cloud. That novel was an intriguing alien first contact story, and the Andromeda Anthology is another — albeit a very different type of first contact!

The anthology in fact includes two books, A for Andromeda (1962) and its sequel Andromeda Breakthrough (1964). The genesis of these books is rather unusual and worth taking a few minutes to discuss. The story begins with the success of Hoyle in his earlier novels The Black Cloud and Ossian’s Ride; the latter captured the attention of the BBC, who wanted to obtain the rights for the latter (the former already having been signed away). In the meeting, they learned that Hoyle was interested in developing an original television story, and they connected him with John Elliot, assistant head of the BBC Script Department, and the two of them put together the plan for an 8-part serial, “A for Andromeda.” The serial was successful when it aired in 1961, but even before it finished production a publisher contacted the BBC about the rights to a novelization. This, of course, become A for Andromeda, which was published in February of 1962.

The BBC then produced a sequel serial, “The Andromeda Breakthrough,” that ran from June to August of 1962. This led to the follow-up novelization that forms the second part of the Andromeda Anthology. It is worth noting that in these collaborations, apparently Hoyle provided the scientific aspects and basic premise of the book while Elliot developed the characters.

So what is the story about? In the near future of 1970, Great Britain has finished construction on a new radio telescope, the most sensitive ever built, designed by scientists John Fleming and Dennis Bridger. Before its official unveiling, initial testing detects a stunning surprise — an artificial signal originating from the Andromeda galaxy, an unfathomable distance away. Fleming quickly realizes that the information being sent, that repeats on a loop, is instructions for how to build a supercomputer, how to program it, and an initial set of data to be fed into it. Approval to build the computer is given by the government, and it is constructed at the Thorness military installation in Scotland. When it is switched on, it begins communicating, first through scientific analogy and then through specific questions about humans and human physiology. When it starts output biological specifications, biologist Madeline Dawnay is brought in to bring those specifications to fruition, and the result is a beautiful, seemingly human, woman who grows to adulthood and learns to talk at a frightening speed. She is named “Andromeda.” With her ability to communicate with the computer, she helps the British government to develop new military technology, securing her role, and that of the computer, as an essential part of Britain’s future.

But what is the purpose of the computer? Who designed it and transmitted the instructions, and why? It is intended to help humanity, or conquer it? John Fleming starts to suspect that the machine has malevolent intentions, but he is quickly shunted aside. Are his fears correct, and is there still time to stop whatever plans of the computer he has inadvertently set in motion?

The first book starts out quite fascinating, and the imaginative influence of Hoyle can be felt throughout. I really liked the concept that the best message an alien race could send us would be instructions to make a machine that could reason and communicate with us! There’s a lot of fun science discussed, including some of the earliest science fiction discussions of genetic engineering.

The frustrating thing about the book is the characters! John Fleming himself is a rather obnoxious fellow — arrogant, impulsive, strongly sexist (he actually slaps a female coworker on the rear, as I recall), and largely a drunk. It is hard to credit his concerns throughout the novel when he is such an angry jerk.

One idea that occurred to me while reading the book is that it can be considered a science fiction telling of the story of the Trojan Horse! Humanity is given a “gift” from space and welcomes it into their home, not realizing that the gift may be carrying the seeds of their destruction. The story overall is also a great reflection on the motivations of scientists, who often pursue knowledge without thinking of the potential consequences. As a story written during the height of the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, the moral is quite clear.

So overall, I enjoyed reading A for Andromeda but didn’t love it. It’s full of neat ideas and it’s always cool to read science fiction by a working scientist, but the characters didn’t fully hold me.

Okay, to talk about the sequel, Andromeda Breakthrough, we have to delve into some significant spoilers for the first book, so if you’re very concerned about that, you can stop right here! Let me put a pause on the page:

…

…

…

…

…

…

Okay? Last warning!

So Andromeda Breakthrough begins literally minutes after the last book ends. In the finale, John finally convinces Andromeda to help him destroy the computer and all information on how to build it. Since the transmission from space has stopped, there would be no way to recreate the machine and begin the threat anew — or so they think. John and Andromeda (Andre for short) go on the run from the government, only to find themselves abducted by a Middle Eastern country that earlier acquired the plans to the computer through espionage, and now the pair are pressed into making the machine work to make the country a technological powerhouse. But at the same time, catastrophic weather starts to strike all around the globe, and they realize that the first computer, the one they destroyed, may have already sealed humanity’s doom…

Where the first book is very much a straight science fiction adventure, the second book is more of a spy thriller, where we first find John and Andre on the run. We also are reintroduced to Intel, a global and secretive spy organization that had a hand in the first book, which is now working on behalf of the Mideast country. We follow the machinations of Intel, the flight of John and Andre, and the actions of the UK government at the same time, as all sides maneuver to achieve their own goals. John is still a bit of an insufferable character by modern standards, but shows a bit more decency than the first book. The secret behind the apocalyptic storm systems is quite ingenious as well, though it seems quite implausible to me, moreso than many science fiction premises.

I was surprised to find that, in spite of my ambivalence about the characters from the first novel, I was pretty invested in learning what happens to them in the second book, and I sped ahead to finish reading it to see the fate of the world and whether they rescued it. Again, I did not love the book, but I enjoyed reading it. We also learn, by the end of the second book, the true purpose of the machine, as envisioned by its long-departed alien designers.

One last thing worth mentioning about the books, and the serials: they were very overtly meant to follow in the tradition of another beloved BBC science fiction series, the Quatermass stories, that appeared in the 1950s. In those stories, a British scientist, Bernard Quatermass, basically comes into conflict with a number of extraterrestrial threats. In Quatermass, one can also see an influence on the later Doctor Who, which first appeared in 1963. I’ve managed to watch the original BBC serial “Quatermass and the Pit” once, and enjoyed it very much; I may have to try out “A for Andromeda” as well.

Speaking of Doctor Who, it is well-known that the BBC in that era were infamous for deleting old episodes of shows to save on the costs of videotape and its storage, meaning that many episodes were lost presumably forever. The same is sadly true of “A for Andromeda,” and only a fraction of the original serial is known to exist. Hopefully one day more episodes will appear in some obscure foreign film archive or in the hands of a collector.