When nothing works anything goes.
Be Prepared! – Boy Scout Motto
Ever since the Neolithic and the introduction of sedentary farming, we are a species that has evolved to rely on external supports to keep us going, an infrastructure that provides water, transportation routes and means, manufacturing, either by hand or machine, of things we need that we do not or cannot make for ourselves, and means of communication that do not require direct line of sight, or being within proximate hearing distance. So, what happens when one of the absolute necessities undergirding all our infrastructures vanishes? It’s not like the K-Pg asteroid that obliterated vast numbers of species across the planet in a day, 66 million years ago. How might people react when there is a sudden, if not immediately lethal, change in our way of living? Will we devolve to warring tribes? Will we come together for the common good? Some combination? Something else entirely?
David Koepp – image from his site
This time it is a major solar flare, aka a CME or Coronal Mass Ejection. Which I prefer to think of, because I am twelve, as massive projectile solar vomiting. (Probably had too much to drink at that intergalactic frat party. It likes beer!) We have not seen the likes of such a mass ejection since 1859. (If we do not count the Braves-Padres game of August 12, 1984, when 17 players and coaches were asked to leave, but I digress). When it arrived back then it did not really make that much difference. We were a pre-electrical civilization. Telegraphy had a bad day. A few wires got fried. This and that went wrong. But no big whup, really. This time the solar storm is the same, but the results will be dramatically different. These days we are a species that is reliant on electricity for almost everything. Very big whup this time. The power spike of power spikes. Everything shuts down, or close enough to it.
There are a few scientists who see what is about to happen. They warn the people who need to be warned, or try. Think the film Don’t Look Up, or almost any disaster film. Of course, the reaction of world leaders is not what Koepp is looking at here.
The notion of extraordinary global events that deprive us of power—in ways both literal and figurative—is something I’ve explored in the past. But it was fascinating to shift my focus from the global to the hyperlocal, and the ways in which tiny communities might come together or split apart during hardship. – from the acknowledgments
There was a wonderful series of ads on in 2020 and 2021, for a shingles vaccine. A person would be shown doing something healthful, or telling how they take care of themselves. The sonorous voice-over would interrupt with “Shingles Doesn’t Care,” which was pretty funny, and memorable, getting the advertiser’s message across that people over 50 should get vaccinated. I thought of that while reading this book. No, no one in the book is suffering from that virus-based ailment, but we are reminded over and over that the best laid plans of mice and men…(Actually the original, from the poem To a Mouse by Robert Burns, goes The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley), which we will translate here into the modern patois of Doomsday Doesn’t Care!
There are the usual suspects who insist that the bad thing is never gonna happen, deniers at full volume. (Sadly, these are all too much a mindless, know-nothing, demagogic trope in real life, so no reaching is required.) Why waste precious government resources (which reminds me of precious bodily fluids from another era) on things like girding for a known, expected emergency, when it can be redirected to building walls, jails, ethnic hatred, religious intolerance, and paranoia, or cutting taxes for the richest. Doomsday Doesn’t Care!
Ok, so a very hard rain is gonna fall, and we need some folks to be our eyes and ears through the experience. Aubrey Wheeler is our primary POV. She is 38 and the default parent of her step-son, Scott, 16. Her ex, Rusty, is a disaster, enough so that when he left, Scott opted to remain with Aubrey.
The guy who impressed Aubrey when they met has taken a nose-dive straight to the bottom, drugs, crime, amorality, and a willingness to use anyone to get what he wants. Rusty was a “shit,” used in the classical sense of “waste matter expelled from the body,” because he had been an enormous misuse of her time, resources, and love.
They reside in Aurora, Illinois, a city of nearly 200,000. But within that, a much tinier slice. Cayuga Lane fit the model of what Aubrey had been trying to build since she was little. Ten minutes from downtown, it was short cul-de-sac with six houses, most of them old builds from the 1920s or ‘30s. Small community number one.
How about if you set up a safe house, a place where you can weather the storm, whether it is months or years, lots of supplies on hand, expertise being shipped there as we speak, lots of nice insulating earth between y’all and the incoming energy burst? Someplace out of the way, say, outside Jericho, Utah. Small community number two.
Thom Banning is an obnoxious billionaire tech sort, brilliant in his way, but maybe not the most gifted person on Earth with people skills. He has reconfigured an old missile site as his personal bug-out retreat in the event of a catastrophe like this one. He even figured in all the professional sorts he might like to have at hand for a long time away from everything. Security, power, comms, food, food-prep, transportation, living space, lots of cash. Excellent Boy Scout work. But then there is that people-person chink. He aspires to reconcile with his wife there. Thom is Aubrey’s big brother. I was in NYC when superstorm Sandy set Con Ed’s Manhattan transformers sparking and popping like slow-sequence firecrackers. Prep all you like. Doomsday Doesn’t Care!
There are smaller looks elsewhere. A city area does not fare well. Reports come in from other places, generally not in a very hopeful way. But the how-are-they-faring focus is primarily on Aurora, and Thom’s redoubt. Koepp wanted to write a ground-level, personal perspective to a disastrous global event, while contrasting someone who was uber-prepared with someone who was not prepared at all.
The story alternates between Aubrey, in Aurora, and Thom, et al, in his tricked-out missile silo, living La Dolce Vita relative to most of humanity, with a few breaks to see through other eyes.
The supporting cast is a mixed lot. Rusty is a baddie from the build-a-loser shop. We have to wonder, even though Koepp offers us a paragraph of explanation, how Aubrey did not see through his act way sooner. He is a powerful presence, but pretty much pure id. There is more going on with Scott, the stepson. A young scientist photobombs the story then vanishes until called on for a cameo later on. An elderly scientist offers a nice touch of deep, zen-like appreciation for the wonders of nature, while shedding bits of goodness and optimism like a seed-stage dandelion on a windy day.
The idea of how different communities might respond to disaster certainly offers us the chance to consider how things might develop in our communities. Would our neighbors come together to forge a way forward, or form armed bands to take whatever they wanted?
The relationship between Aubrey and Thom is a connective thread that sustains a tension level throughout. What is the big secret, often hinted at, which binds them? What level of crazy will Rusty reach? How far will he go?
I would have preferred a bit more on the science and details of how a newly power-free world slows to a stop, with discussion about what would be needed to crank things back up. But that’s just me. The story in no way requires this.
Aurora does not break new ground with its local-eyed view of global phenomena, but it works that approach effectively enough. Aubrey is an appealing lead, disorganized, very human, flawed, but very decent at heart, thus someone we can easily root for. Characters do grow (some better, some worse) over the duration, which is what we look for in good writing. You will want to know what happens next, and next, and next, so should keep flipping the pages. There is not a lot of humor here, but still, I caught a few LOLs sprinkled in. It seems to have been written very much for the screen, with a minimum of internal dialogue, and an absence of florid description. Plot is uber alles here, driving the engine forward.
Movie rights have been sold, which is not at all surprising, given the author’s impressive career as a screenwriter and director. Kathryn Bigelow has been signed to direct it for Netflix.
This is a wonderful Summer read, mostly a thriller to keep the juices flowing. Hopefully, it prompts you to give at least some thought to how your community might react when faced with a comparable crisis. High art it ain’t, but it does not intend to be. No Sleeping Beauty here, this Aurora is a page-turner of a thriller and will keep you wide awake while you read.
…last year, things made sense. Last year, you walked into the grocery store, you paid a fair price, and you came out with your dinner. This year, you beg somebody to sell you a week’s worth of groceries for a thousand dollars. ‘if you’re lucky, they say yes, and you eat. If you’re not. They beat you to death, take your money, and they eat.
Review posted – June 24, 2022
Publication date – June 7, 2022
This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads
=======================================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, and <Instagram pages
From his site
David Koepp has written or co-written the screenplays for more than thirty films, including Apartment Zero (1989), Bad Influence (1990), Death Becomes Her (1992), Carlito’s Way (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), The Paper (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Snake Eyes (1998), Panic Room (2002), Spider-Man (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Angels & Demons (2009), and Inferno (2016).
As a director, his work includes the films The Trigger Effect (1996), Stir of Echoes (1999), Secret Window (2004), Ghost Town (2007), Premium Rush (2012), and You Should Have Left (2020). Ghost Town and Premium Rush were co-written with the enigmatic John Kamps.
Koepp’s first novel, Cold Storage, was published by Ecco in 2019, and his new story Yard Work is coming from Audible Originals in July.
Interviews
—–Author Stories – David Koepp – a lot on his experience of writing novels and screenplays rather than about this book in particular. But they do get to Aurora in the final third – audio – 43:20
—–The Nerd Daily – Q&A: David Koepp, Author of ‘Aurora’ by Elise Dumpleton
Items of Interest
—–FEMA – Catastrophic Earthquake Planning – New Madrid Seismic Zone
—– Mid-America Earthquake Center – Civil and Environmental Engineering Department University of Illinois – Impact of Earthquakes on the Central USA
—–Deadline – Kathryn Bigelow To Direct Adaptation Of David Koepp Novel ‘Aurora’ For Netflix
—–Doctor Strangelove – Precious Bodily Fluids
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