When a solar storm hits the earth, the lights go out across the planet in David Koepp’s latest novel, Aurora. But this time the blackout won’t be over soon – it could last for years. Aubrey and her stepson now face the biggest challenge of their lives: A society without rules.
Soon they hear rumours of riots, the struggle for food becomes real, and even within their small communities, the rule of law is collapsing. Aubrey’s estranged brother Thom, a self-made billionaire who abandoned her years ago, retreats to a gilded desert bunker where he can ride out the crisis in perfect luxury.
But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of a personal reckoning long overdue…
We spoke to David Koepp about writing his latest novel, and how the adaptations of both this and his previous novel, Cold Storage, are coming along…
When did you first get the idea for Aurora?
I’ve been interested in the subject for a long time. I actually made a movie about a blackout in the mid-90s called The Trigger Effect, which was narrowly focused on these three people stuck together. I like that story but I thought it would be interesting to see what something much longer-lasting and maybe with worldwide implications would be like. So I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and gathering string, as they say. Collecting ideas and articles and looking at impact reports that the government issues about what they think would happen and whether we are prepared or not. So it’s been quite a while brewing, actually!
How much research did you go into for the novel?
[I went] fairly deeply. There were two different areas to research. The first was technical, what are the solar events that would occur and how do they come about? How often do they happen? Are we really likely to have another one of these soon?
The answer to all that was yes.
They happen. They happen every day during periods of high solar activity. How often do they hit the Earth directly? As far as we can tell from historical data, probably every 100 to 200 years. The last significant one was in 1859, The Carrington Event, named for the British astronomer who observed it, and that was a direct hit on Earth from a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun. Now, in 1859, the only major electrical systems that were up and running were telegraphs. So they all went out, they were down for days and there was mayhem along the telegraph lines and the switching boards. But other than that, most people thought it was just a delightful, natural event. And it is a delightful natural event, provided you’re not hooked up to an electrical grid…
So there was the scientific research and then there was the ‘how will people react?’ research. Some of that is through reading government reports. And a lot of it is just speculation.
I couldn’t focus on the whole world. I didn’t want it to be some big globe-trotting, disaster movie-type thing. I wanted to look at two very specific communities. One led by a guy who has massively prepared for this, because there’s a big Prepper community out there in the world, and one following a woman who’s done absolutely nothing. Her approach to the next disaster is to deny it and avoid it. Like most of us. The idea was to see what happens if it all falls apart for the prepared person and the unprepared person discovers strength they didn’t know they had.
Speaking of the last time this happened, the first page of the novel outlines The Carrington Event – the last time a real solar event of a magnitude like the one in Aurora happened – why did you decide to include this?
I think it’s important to know that this isn’t just something a writer made up. That this happens. And though it hasn’t happened yet, it will. It will happen and the question is, how will we handle it? It could happen tomorrow, it could happen in 100 years, but it will happen because we live close, very close, a scant 92 million miles, from a giant erupting ball of hydrogen plasma.
It’s going to happen, so I wanted to include the historical context to say: ‘Look, this occurred, so I’m not making this up. Here’s what I think it might go like if it happened again.’
What is your writing process?
I start with a very loose outline, and I mean, very loose. This just includes the first few chapters and then maybe certain events that I think need to happen later. I don’t know the ending at that point. I don’t really know much of the middle, and I don’t know the characters very well.
So then I start writing what I think chapter one might be. Because as soon as you start just sitting there putting decent sentences together, with and about a character, then that character starts to grow and become a person. Then that person will make certain decisions about the story for you.
So I’m outlining as I go and what I’ve found is, I don’t really have a finished outline until I have a finished draft.
If have an outline from about 50 pages in, then I have an outline for the rest of the story, because now my brain is engaged and I’ve started to know the characters and here’s where I think they’ll go. But that changes all the time. With a book in particular, as opposed to a movie script, I find you’re just getting deeper and deeper into the characters’ minds and lives. And that should dictate where the story goes.
There are characters from all walks of life in Aurora, how do you go about developing characters in your novels?
I think every character you write comes from a part of you. There’s a guy who’s extremely wealthy [in the novel] and I wouldn’t describe myself that way, but I’ve certainly done well in movies and stuff. He’s used to having things his own way and he wants to try to control things, so I had to access the uglier parts of my personality that maybe I usually successfully hide away or don’t respond to, and let him run.
Then the other side of that coin was Aubrey, who is that guy’s sister. They’re siblings. She’s from a small Midwestern town, and didn’t leave. They had this tragic event when they were teenagers, and it changed both of them. She’s very much me too, because I’m from a Midwestern town, I did leave but where you grew up is always with you. She feels unprepared for what life throws at her and I’ve always felt unprepared for what life throws, like most of us!
Then there’s a teenager – I’ve got four kids. So writing a 15 year old was kind of fun. I have a 15 year old at the moment. This character is not like him but I’ve been around my share of 15 year olds, and I’ve been a 15 year old.
There’s also an old guy across the street, who’s very thoughtful and philosophical and irreverent. I took pieces of one of my friends in particular who’s of the same age. As you add characters, you take little bits of your life and people you know and spin them all together.
The wealthy character you mentioned has built a doomsday bunker. How fun was it to create a money-no-object bunker in the novel?
Oh, that was great fun! Also, billionaires are the last safe prejudice. We’re allowed to mock them openly because they have billions of dollars and some of them make easy targets.
I had to be careful not to, I hope, go too far. Because he is a character who changes over the course of the story, and I would love for you to not hate him. But you’re certainly allowed to hate him toward the beginning. It was great fun to make fun of people who have who have everything, of enormous privilege.
If there was a worldwide electric blackout right now, what would you miss the most?
I think I would miss my friends and family. Because suddenly you can’t talk to them unless you’re in the same room and I would wonder what they’re up to.
We all talk to people for support every day. Even if we’re not in a crisis. We’re calling them up to say something annoying that happened or something wonderful that happened or some bit of news we’re all following. I would miss that interaction.
In your previous novel, Cold Storage, the world suffered an mysterious contagion, and now in Aurora the world has a global electric short out. What do you have planned for the world in your next novel?
I have another idea for a book that I’m noodling, but it won’t be a disaster. It does have another unexpected sort of thing, but it’s more how this might affect people and destabilise things, or stabilise things. But it’s not a disaster, enough with the disasters!
But what’s important to note is that I thought of the book prior to Covid and I wrote it during Covid. My assessment of the book changed and the approach to the story changed based on my experience of Covid and many people’s experience of it. It’s a tragedy and many still have long Covid and lingering effects. It was a disaster.
However, if you were lucky enough to be unaffected, and you had your house and the people you love to have their health, it was a surprising time. We were suddenly all together, particularly if you had kids or if you’re an adult kid, returning to your parents home. There was this interregnum, there was this time when you were all just coping and ambitions got set aside for a year or so and there were things about it that we’re kind of beautiful.
Do you think people read catastrophic novels like Aurora differently after the Covid pandemic than they would have before it?
I think our analysis of it is different, because we’ll look at it and think; ‘Okay, does this author or this filmmaker know what they’re talking about? Did they go through the same Covid I did?’.
Because you can’t write any kind of scenario where something unexpected happens to society and not take into account how we all reacted to Covid. How we all feel. Because we’re different and we’ll always be different.
I wrote a movie that was on HBO Max earlier this year called Kimi (that I recommend highly by the way). Steven Soderbergh is the director and we talked a lot about what Covid would be like a year from now. Because you have to plan for when the movie comes out. I think the movie got it kind of right. Covid’s still lingering. Some people wear masks, some people don’t, but it’s changed all of us. And it has scarred some people. So the movie reflects that.
This is a historical era, as we now see that Covid is going to go on for a while, there’s a progressive amount of getting used to it, but there’s no forgetting about it or denying it, ever.
You’ve written both screenplays and books. What are some of the differences in those two writing processes?
Books take longer! They both take a long time to think about, but writing a draft of a book obviously takes a lot longer than writing a draft of a screenplay. If I know a screenplay well, and I’ve thought about it a long time, and I’ve got a good outline, then I can write it in three weeks. A blistering pace for a book would be four months for me. It takes time.
The difference is, you’re very alone with a book and it’s good because you really get a long time to figure out your problems in private and figure out what you want to say. When you work with an editor, you get some notes from some friends you ask to read it, you get some reactions, but they’re your friends so they’re not going to be mean to you, normally. Then the editor tries to help you, in my experience, in a very genteel way.
In movies, you have a lot of voices from the beginning. Then if the movie proceeds and is going to get made into a movie, the voices just multiply as more executives, producers, directors and actors and other people who are making the film come in. So it’s a much more communal process making a movie.
What do you want for readers to take away from Aurora?
I hope they’ll find it somewhat encouraging. I certainly found it rather touching toward the end. I got to really like the characters. I think they all discovered things about themselves that they didn’t know or that they knew but had hidden away. So I hope that it’s encouraging about something terrible that happens, and that there’s a certain amount of uplift. I certainly meant there to be, because it was genuine, because I felt it myself.
Both Cold Storage and Aurora are being adapted with you writing the screenplays. How are those coming along?
Cold Storage, I’ve already done. The director is a terrific British director named Jonny Campbell. We start shooting in September. Liam Neeson is in it as well as Joe Keery, who you might know from Stranger Things. A terrific actor. That starts in September for StudioCanal. So that’s all going well, and I would say that adaptation was pretty straightforward.
The Aurora adaptation has been a little bit more of an interpretation because Aurora involves a lot of people sitting in rooms talking and that isn’t always the best movie! Especially if it’s something that’s supposed to be tense and suspenseful.
I sold that to Netflix. Kathryn Bigelow is directing it and she’s great. So we’re working on the screenplay right now. In fact, here it is in my hand! So I’m working on that as we speak. We’re hoping to shoot at some point just after the first of the year.
Aurora by David Koepp is published on 9th June in hardback, ebook and audio download (HQ, £14.99). Order yours here.