The Andromeda Strain to the upper atmosphere, where the oxygen content is lower, better suiting its growth. The novel's epilogue reveals that a manned spacecraft, "Andros V", was incinerated during atmospheric re-entry, presumably because Andromeda had eaten its tungsten/plastic laminate heat shield and caused it to burn up. Crichton was inspired to write the novel after reading "The IPCRESS File" by Len Deighton while studying in England. Crichton says he was "terrifically impressed" by the book - "a lot of "Andromeda" is traceable to "Ipcress" in terms of trying to create an imaginary world using recogniseable techniques and real people." He wrote the
The IPCRESS File Deighton's mother cooked for Wolkoff's dinner parties and he said that he "vividly" remembered when British MI5 agents came to arrest her: "The experience was a major factor in my decision to write a spy story at my first attempt at fiction." The plot involves mind control, the acronym IPCRESS of the title standing for "Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under Stress". The brainwashing is similar to a shock technique called psychic driving pioneered by Donald Ewen Cameron in the 1950s, originally on unwitting mental hospital patients, which was used and funded by the Central Intelligence Agency's secret MKULTRA