I remember when David Cronenberg announced his novel Consumed, there was some eyebrow-raising in the literary community. Shouldn’t the serious business of writing be left to serious professionals, as opposed to dilettante dabblers? Turned out that Consumed was a literary distillation of an ultimate Cronenberg movie.



Now we have that most looked down upon of writers, the screenwriter, having the temerity to turn his hand to penmanship. The screenwriter in questions is David Koepp, the ninth most s

I remember when David Cronenberg announced his novel Consumed, there was some eyebrow-raising in the literary community. Shouldn’t the serious business of writing be left to serious professionals, as opposed to dilettante dabblers? Turned out that Consumed was a literary distillation of an ultimate Cronenberg movie.



Now we have that most looked down upon of writers, the screenwriter, having the temerity to turn his hand to penmanship. The screenwriter in questions is David Koepp, the ninth most successful of all time, according to Wikipedia, with $2.3 billion in US box office receipts.



Koepp has penned Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World (1997), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Mission: Impossible (1996), Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), Spider-Man (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), and Angels & Demons (2009). He has also dabbled in directing, from Secret Window (2004) to You Should Have Left (2019).



All popcorn movies, of course. And make no mistake about it, Cold Storage is a popcorn novel, what used to be dismissively referred to as an ‘airport thriller’ (probably referring to books on racks in airports for bored travellers to buy to while away the time).



But this is gourmet popcorn. I inhaled Cold Storage in under two days, and thought little else while reading it, so desperate was I to find out how our hero gets to the ex-military cold storage facility in time to assist the two lowly security workers there to prevent a global meltdown from a fungal parasite brought back to earth in wreckage from the Skylab crash.



That is all you need to know about the plot, suffice it to say that, once you start reading this, you won’t be able to put it down until the perfect beat on the final page. What is so great about Koepp’s writing is that he foregrounds his characters in the action, which allows the reader to identify with them and their fate. Including Mr. Scroggins the cat.



The science bits are also integrated cleverly with the characterisation, which avoids the problem of info-dumping and slowing down what is meant to be a breakneck narrative at the end of the day, not a science lecture.



What also surprised me is how funny this book is. Koepp knows that the savvy reader will find his plot ridiculous and derivative, which it is on both counts, but he invests it with such energy and wit that the reader is effectively seduced into loving every improbable second of it.



Including the gross-out bits, of which there are plenty. It is perhaps no surprise that Koepp is a very visual writer, able to evoke both action and character beats with an impressive economy of style.



Yes, serious Literature has a place and a purpose, but so has a novel like Cold Storage, which briefly whisks one away from one’s problems to contemplate the impact of something as dastardly as cordyceps novus on our ordinary lives.



As a side note, it will be interesting to read The Andromeda Evolution after this, Daniel H. Wilson’s follow-up to the Michael Crichton classic. I suspect that this will be a far more contemplative SF novel, as opposed to Koepp’s irreverent and fun take on the sub-genre.