Michael Newman and Jon Land’s new sci-fi thriller Icefall has been favorably compared to John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” debuting a new brand of superheroes who are all that stands between the world and total annihilation at the hands of an alien race. Here Newman and Land talk about their coming together and how their collaborative process worked.
MICHAEL NEWMAN: ICEFALL began with a story I couldn’t let go of. I had this idea of something buried deep inside the ice, hidden from humanity for 150,000 years until the modern world finally uncovered it. From there, the story grew into something much bigger: an alien ship frozen beneath Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier, a terrifying threat released into the present day, and the awakening of the Nine, ancient superbeings sent to Earth to protect us from a danger humanity could never survive alone.
JON LAND: When Mike first sent me ICEFALL, what struck me immediately was the ambition of it. This was not a small idea. Mike had created a story with enormous scope: an alien threat emerging from the ice, a family pulled into a global crisis, ancient mythology stretching back through human history, and the Nine, a group of superbeings awakened to defend Earth from a hostile alien race. The vision behind it was tremendous. And in that vision I saw science fiction on the scale of movies that I absolutely love like “The Thing” and “Aliens,” perpetual culture staples. I saw an opportunity to create a new mythology on par with those classics.
MICHAEL NEWMAN The mythology of the Nine was one of the earliest and most important pieces for me. I was drawn to the number nine because it appears across so many cultures and belief systems. In different traditions, it can suggest completeness, cosmic order, power, destiny, and guardianship. I wanted the Nine to feel larger than any single culture or myth. They had to belong to all of humanity. But mythology alone was never enough. The Nine couldn’t just be powerful. They had to be burdened, emotional, and deeply connected to the human story. That became the soul of ICEFALL for me. Yes, it is a fast-paced science-fiction action thriller, but underneath the action, it asks bigger questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone? What if humanity is part of something far larger than we understand?
JON LAND: Yes, all of that is there and more, but we needed to settle on how best to tell the story. The challenge with a book like ICEFALL is balance. It blends science fiction, thriller, horror, action, and mythology. If any one element overwhelms the others, the book can lose focus. So we let the story dictate what it needed. The creature elements and horror texture gave the book danger. The science-fiction ideas gave it scale. The thriller structure gave it momentum. And the emotional story gave it meaning.
MICHAEL NEWMAN: Exactly right. When I first brought the manuscript to Jon, I had a lot of pieces I believed in — the glacier, the alien ship, Kai and Jules [a married team of scientists brought to the scene of the alien ship), the Nine, the mythology, and the emotional core. But I also knew the book would benefit from another set of instincts, especially from someone who understood the machinery of a thriller at the highest level. That was the real beginning of the collaboration.
JON LAND: Spot on! From that point forward, the book became a true back-and-forth process. We talked through the story, rewrote sections, challenged ideas, strengthened characters, reworked structure, and kept building on each other’s contributions. Some scenes changed because of my instincts. Others changed because of Mike’s. Often, the best moments came from the two of us pushing the same idea until it became stronger than either of us would have reached alone. But that process was never one-sided. Mike and I went back and forth constantly. That’s what real collaboration looks like. It is not one writer replacing another writer’s work. It is two writers building something together.
MICHAEL NEWMAN: Jon brought the experience, pacing, structure, suspense, and thriller instinct the book needed to be great, but he never treated the original vision as something to discard. He respected the foundation I had built and helped elevate it. He understood the scale of the story.
JON LAND: Well, I love to think big—in this case, huge! My role was to bring my experience in structure, pacing, suspense and action to the table. One of the biggest creative challenges was the Nine themselves. You cannot introduce nine superbeings and fully explore all of them in one book without stopping the story cold. At the same time, they can’t feel interchangeable. Mike and I worked hard to develop them in a way that would leave readers eager to learn more in future books. That’s where Mike deserves tremendous credit. All he cared about, all both of us cared about, was making ICEFALL the best book it could be. He was open to the story evolving, which is one of the most important qualities any writer can have.
MICHAEL NEWMAN: As a debut novelist, working with someone of Jon’s talent could have been intimidating. Instead, it became energizing. He gave the story room to grow while honoring what made it mine in the first place. The process taught me that collaboration only works when there is trust. I trusted Jon’s instincts, and he trusted the world I had created. Together, through a lot of discussion and rewriting, we found the version of ICEFALL that needed to be told.
JON LAND: For sure! That’s why the collaboration worked. Mike brought the heart, the originality, and the world. I helped bring the machinery of the book to full power. So ICEFALL isn’t Mike’s book or my book. It’s our book. And that is exactly what a true collaboration should be.
