Subhuman by Michael McBride

“Scientists are closing in on warm caves under Antarctica which could support secret life”

(http://www.businessinsider.com/warm-caves-under-antarctica-which-could-support-secret-life-2017-9)

Life always finds a way. There’s no other rational explanation for how anything can survive in Antarctica, a continent where the winter is spent in total darkness and at an average temperature of more than fifty degrees below zero. We’re talking about an environment as barren and desolate as the surface of the moon, and yet trapped beneath the ice is an amazing biome unlike any other on the planet.

The world might be dead aboveground, but it is alive with volcanic activity below. Geothermal heat is responsible for keeping entire networks of lakes and rivers from freezing at depths of more than two miles beneath the surface and, as we’re only now learning, the formation of systems of caves warm enough to support higher orders of life. In addition to bacteria and fungi, soil samples have demonstrated traces of DNA from algae, mosses, and small animals, among them species of unknown origin not found anywhere else in the world.

While exploration of the caves has only just begun, some speculate that these warrens could potentially cover the entire continent beneath the ice, connecting them with the site of the recent discovery of a 13,000 year-old meteorite containing fossilized bacteria theorized to be of extraterrestrial origin. Combining an isolated subterranean ecosystem with organisms that shouldn’t have otherwise survived is a recipe for disaster.

It’s this precise scenario that forms the basis for the first book in the Unit 51 Series, Subhuman, in which a team of scientists discovers that something terrifying has survived beneath the ice, something that’s not entirely human. I challenge you to imagine the possibilities presented by this article and then read Subhuman—coming this November from Kensington Publishing, available wherever books are sold—and you’ll soon learn that far worse things than death await us below.

Subhuman by Michael McBride

“Researchers find secret, warm oasis beneath Antarctica’s ice that could be home to undiscovered species”

(http://nationalpost.com/news/world/researchers-find-secret-warm-oasis-beneath-antarcticas-ice-that-could-be-home-to-undiscovered-species)

After millennia beneath the ice, the frozen continent of Antarctica is finally starting to give up its secrets, and what amazing secrets they are. A 13,000-year-old meteorite containing fossilized bacteria believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. The remains of a cat-sized, egg-laying, distant relative of modern mammals. Bodies of water the size of the Great Lakes encapsulated beneath two vertical miles of ice and brimming with the kinds of extremophilic organisms responsible for the genesis of the planet’s earliest atmosphere. And now, an entire system of caves heated by geothermal energy and capable of supporting not just higher orders of life, but species believed to exist nowhere else on the planet.

How did these enigmatic organisms survive? How did they wind up at the bottom of the world in the most hostile environment on the globe? Scientists are racing to Antarctica and braving the vicious elements to find the answers to these questions, answers that could potentially change our understanding of the origin—not to mention the future—of all life on Earth.

In a case of life imitating art, this is precisely the scenario I envisioned when I sat down in the spring of 2016 to write Subhuman, the first book in the Unit 51 Series. These extant species have beaten seemingly insurmountable odds to survive and triumphed over environmental pressures undoubtedly capable of triggering unbelievable feats of evolution. And on a continent so desolate and in such a brutal climate, you have to figure that any physical mutations have the potential to be truly frightening.

Check out this article from the National Post and then track down a copy of Subhuman, coming this November from Kensington Publishing, available wherever books are sold.

Sometimes, even nature makes mistakes.

THEY ARE NOT HUMAN

 

They Are Not Human.

At a research station in Antarctica, five of the world’s top scientists have been brought together to solve one of the greatest mysteries in human history. Their subject, however, is anything but human . . .

They Are Not Natural.

Deep beneath the ice, the submerged ruins of a lost civilization hold the key to the strange mutations that each scientist has encountered across the globe: A misshapen skull in Russia. The grotesque carvings of a lost race in Peru. The mummified remains of a humanoid monstrosity in Egypt . . .

They Are Not Friendly.