Cold Storage

Screenwriter and director Koepp makes his fiction debut with a sensational SF thriller. In 1979, Skylab, the first NASA space station, crashes into the Indian Ocean, with a piece landing in Western Australia. Aboard Skylab is a highly adaptive fungal organism, Cordyceps novus, which was sent into space as a research project. Once back on Earth, the organism starts to evolve into a sentient killer that sees humankind—and all other life-forms—as nourishment. In 1987, USAF Maj. Roberto Diaz, a Defense Nuclear Agency operative, manages to contain the organism after it decimates a remote Australian community in nightmarish fashion. In 2019, Diaz, who’s now retired, receives the midnight call he’s been dreading—the remnants of the organism, buried far underground inside a former military installation in Kansas, may have escaped. Diaz rushes from his North Carolina home to Kansas, where he joins two security guards in battling the menace. Breakneck pacing and nonstop action compensate for the predictable story line and the occasional contrivance. Michael Crichton fans won’t want to miss this one. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (Sept.)