It’s not often that the elements of an adventure thriller come true in real life. But reality has just given my thriller The Atlas Fracture a gold star. The book speculates on microbial life found deep under the Antarctic ice. And this microbial life is not the kind you want to bring home to meet the parents.

Now further research on water samples taken from under the ice cap in a feature called Lake Whillans confirms there are all sorts of bugs swimming around. “We found not just that things are alive, but that there’s an active ecosystem,” said lead study author Brent Christner, a microbiologist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “If you had to think up what would be the coolest scenario for an ecosystem in Antarctica, you couldn’t make this up.” Well, not to be cheeky to Brent Christner, but actually you could. Check out The Atlas Fracture and the follow-on The Ceres Plague (available soon).

Could one of the microbes found in Lake Whillans be the bug that Dr. Crandee finds in The Atlas Fracture?

Let’s hope not.