Fantastic Voyage

by Isaac Asimov

Two antagonist countries see their battle for scientific progress and military intelligence outbalanced when the most brilliant scientist of one of the opposite nations crosses the boundaries in benefit of the other. However few hours after arriving at his exile he becomes the victim of an attack that leaves him in a comatose state. A group of scientist and a secret agent are miniaturized together with a nuclear submarine in order to be injected into the body of this scientist, who holds in his mind a terrible scientific secret.  This uncanny team has 60 minutes to travel through his blood system to wipe the blood clot in this genius's brain.  If they fail, this man will die and mankind will be doomed.

I really enjoyed this book, which was based on the script of the 1966 movie.  Asimov changed some scientific mistakes in the story and created an amazing sci-fi thriller. It's full of action but at the same time it's so full of real facts about the human body and how it works that after finishing the book, the reader has had a great time and learnt some interesting things about anatomy.

I think Asimov tried his best at making the story less Hollywood-like but still the characters lack elaboration and are rather plain, which is the only drawback I found in the book.  He re-wrote the story again under the title Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain.  I haven't read this second book but from what I've seen the plot is exactly the same, so I guess Asimov wrote it for his own satisfaction or because he was not convinced about the first one.

All in all, it's an entertaining book, mixing up sci-fi and spy fiction.  Ideal for those who want to have fun after a tougher reading.  It doesn't matter if you are not a great fun of sci-fi books.