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Amentep wrote:

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Didn't Issac Asimov change some things in his novelization of Fantastic Voyage so the science worked better, including altering the end?

To start, the film assumes that matter is continuous.  Asimov knew they'd be dealing with molecules and atoms. 

He noted that you can't reduce a human to microscopic size by just using fewer atoms, as the mini-people wouldn't have enough brain cells for human intelligence.  So, in order to tell the story, he assumed that somehow the atoms themselves were reduced in size.

Now, this caused some new problems.  E.g., how can the reduced people breathe normal sized oxygen molecules?  You will recall that they sucked up an air supply with a snorkel from the patient's lungs. Asimov finds an explanation that almost works.

Asimov explains that he often offers a semi-plausible rationale and then has the action take over so that no one will notice any remaining impossibilities.  (A good science fiction writer knows when to ease off the science for the sake of the fiction.)  He gets to do that a whole lot in the novelization. There are issues with surface tension (even a powerful sub couldn't crack a drop of plasma, or water, on that scale), and communication (how does the mini-sub send and receive radio waves of standard amplitude?)

Isaac wanted to change the details of the ending.  He refused to let the Hollywood people talk him out of it.  Y'see, even though the miniaturized submarine (with the villainous Donald Pleasance inside) it gets engulfed by the white corpuscle, the atoms are still there, and will re-expand to normal size according to the rules set at the outset.  Ergo, the patient has been cured of his cranial bloodclot, but is soon to have matter from an entire submarine popping out of his skull.  Not good.  But Dr. A. has an answer for that.

He says that the science was particularly bad when the antibodies attacked Raquel Welch in her skintight diving suit, but that he still could see the value in the scene.  Good fellow!

If you want to read more, check out his essay.  I'll try to get a reference to it.