One writer whose work straddles both techno-thriller and science-fiction is Michael Crichton whose books come with a good deal of well-researched scientific detail, even accompanying charts and graphs. A full-blown science-fiction film would be concerned with the possibilities or after-effects of the mass devastation these might offer a techno-thriller is usually concerned with simply the chase to obtain/retrieve the items or individuals threatening to unleash them. A perfect example might be the box of nuclear materials in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) or the vial of germ warfare agents in The Satan Bug (1965). In the works included here, the techno-thriller element is often little more than a McGuffin – Alfred Hitchcock’s term for an object (such as a device or a formula) that is sought by parties in order to drive the plot in a thriller. James Olson attempts to make it through the shafts of the Wildfire facility at the climax of The Andromeda Strain (1971) adapted from Michael Crichton’s novel Rather what we define a techno-thriller as is a work that counts as nominal science-fiction due to its use of advanced technology but where the science-fictional content is not conceptual but secondary to other aspects such as thriller or action. In filmed techno-thrillers, this is not necessarily the case where pages of technical detail can be reduced to a mere couple of lines of dialogue (if at all in some cases). The usage that is applied to the works derived from Tom Clancy is of thrillers where much realistic-seeming detail is expended in making the SF element seem plausible.

We will also differ somewhat from the dictionary definition of ‘techno-thriller’. Any novel in which future developments in science play a central role is not a techno-thriller at all: it is SF.” The SF element tends not to be presented in a sophisticated or analytic way … the only transformation of the world permitted is the End of the World, which almost never happens. “A tale which, though it often makes use of SF devices, in fact occupies a mundane world … A typical techno-thriller plot evokes a technological scenario whose world-transforming implications are left unexamined or evaded, often through the use of plots in which a potential SF novum is reduced to a McGuffin.

The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following definition of a techno-thriller: “A novel or movie in which the excitement of the plot depends in large part upon the descriptions of computers, weapons, software, military vehicles, or other machines.” It is not known who coined the term.įor this site, techno-thriller is used in the broader sense defined by The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction (1992).

The term ‘techno-thriller’ was coined in the 1980s to describe the spy thrillers of Tom Clancy that were dense with explanations about the workings of military equipment.

The andromeda strain movie black lines