Michael McBride is an author I’ve found to be consistently reliable in producing hard science-based horror fiction. His work dovetails rather nicely with that of authors like Michael Crichton, James Rollins, and the writing duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (although both also have a hefty library of solo books, too), not to mention television series like The X-Files and Fringe. I suspect that if you’re a fan of any of these then you’re perfectly primed to dig into just about any one of McBride’s adventures. In fact, if you’re new to McBride, Spores is a terrific jumping-on point as it’s billed as the first in his new The Creature Files series.

McBride wastes no time getting down to business, opening the book with a widescreen cinematic-styled epic disaster that sees an earthquake rip open the tarmac of Denver International Airport. Seismologist Dayna Raines is called to duty by the USGS, along with a small group of chemical, structural, and biomedical engineers. What Raines, her team, and millions of others whose lives are unknowingly jeopardized don’t know is that beneath the airport is a decommissioned deep injection well the U.S. Army had used to dispose of biological and chemical weapons created during World War II. Over the intervening years, these hazardous chemicals have been eating away at the earth beneath Denver and it’s only a matter of time before a massive earthquake is triggered and wipes out the entire city.

Of course, that’s only just the start of it. Soon, their mission to launch a controlled demolition to backfill the subterranean cavity and prevent any further earthquakes is jeopardized by General Jack Randall, an ornery old man with hideous scars that betray a deadly secret from his past. Randall and his team essentially draft Raines and her team, merging their dual purposes of destroying the cavern… and whatever it is that lurks below. Something Randall has encountered before and tried — and failed — top stop once before.

McBride hits that wonderful sweet spot for me, building tension and unfolding the scope of his science-based horrors in slow-burn fashion, while also making the threats scarily plausible. Not to mention frighteningly timely. Hot on the heels of Spores release, Phys.org reported on a work published in the journal Fungal Systematics and Evolution about a newly discovered novel species of fungus found on spiders in multiple cave systems in Ireland that operates similarly to the infamous ‘zombie-ant’ fungus, Ophiocordyceps. I won’t proclaim McBride to be prognosticator just yet, although the origins of Spores goes back roughly twenty years according to his afterword. The man certainly knows his cutting-edge science, though, and has illustrated as much across a large spread of novels.

And Spores is positively brimming with science. McBride spends a lot of time exploring seismology, ground scanning, the use of drones, and, of course, fungus. Spores also acts as a warning reminder of the perils of mankind’s abuse of Mother Nature and the dangers of deep injection wells, drilling, and fracking, not to mention the perils of chemical weapons and biohazards. These latter topics are worrisome enough on their own, but once McBride starts looking at how nature continually responds and adapts to our worst inclinations, well, that’s when things get downright hair-raising. Once the scientists and their military escorts are dropped into the chemical and fungal soup waiting for them at the bottom of the earth, Spores becomes an energetic thrill-ride of freaky subterranean horror.

The best part is, McBride is only just getting started with these Creature Files, and his final chapters tease us with all kind of deadly possibilities of what’s to come. I’m scared of what weird biohorrors he’s cooking up in the lab for us, but also eager to read all about it, and hopefully soon!