Novel: James Vance Marshall: White-Out (Soho Press, 1999)
James Vance Marshall’s White-Out is in many ways the quintessential Antarctic novel. Its centerpiece is a long sledging journey undertaken across the Antarctic Peninsula by a group of men fighting for survival. All the usual privations from hunger to the blizzards are featured in turn.
The story starts like [...]

I recently read the book Nuoren toimittajan eloonjäämisopas (The Young Journalists’ Survival Guide) by the journalists Anni Lintula and Meri Valkama. I was surprized how little it reflected my own experiences. It wasn’t too long ago when I was a young journalist too.
Many colleagues have commented that this is a book that makes even professional, [...]

Children’s book: Kenneth Hite & Christina Rodriguez: Antarctic Express (Atlas Games, 2009)
Ken Hite’s Antarctic Express sounds like a joke: it’s a children’s picture book version of H.P. Lovecraft’s Antarctic tale At the Mountains of Madness. Surprisingly, it’s pretty good, probably because it feels like it’s been done in all seriousness. I haven’t seen many tales [...]

Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura ry julkaisee tämän vuoden Ropeconissa kaksi roolipeliä. Toinen on norjasta käännetty surrealistinen peli nimeltä Itran kaupunki ja toinen on oma pingviiniaiheinen esikoispelini Ikuisuuden laakso.

Ikuisuuden laakso on paikka, jonne pingviinit tulevat kuolemaan. Etelämantereen loputon jäätikkö on armoton vihollinen. Siellä selviävät vain rohkeimmat pingviinisankarit ja katalimmat antipingviinit.
Pingviinisankari elää elämänsä yksin. Hän on nähnyt asioita, [...]

Non-fiction: ed. Nancy Robinson Flannery: This Everlasting Silence - The love letters of Paquita Delprat and Douglas Mawson 1911-1914 (Melbourne University Press, 2000)
The Australian Douglas Mawson is an Antarctic explorer contemporary with his more famous colleagues Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Ernst Shackleton. He’s less known because he never attempted stunts like being first [...]

This was the first year in some time I missed the Nordic roleplaying conference Knutepunkt, organized this year in Norway. The Norwegians published their book on the net with exemplary speed, and it has an article by me as well.
The name of the book is Larp, the Universe and Everything, and it can be found [...]

Non-fiction: David A. Kearns: Where Hell Freezes Over (Thomas Dunne Books, 2005)
During a U.S. Navy surveying operation in Antarctica soon after the end of WWII, an airplane crashes onto the coast. The survivors wait for two weeks before they’re rescued, all badly wounded except one.
It’s a dramatic story, but Kearns approaches it with incredible diligence. [...]

Here’s probably the best customer review on Amazon, of the self-help book The Secret.
Please allow me to share with you how “The Secret” changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of “The Secret” [...]

John Calvin Batchelor: the Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica (The Dial Press, 1983)
This is one of the strangest Antarctic novels I’ve yet to read. It’s about the son of an American draft dodger and a Swedish witch, called Grim Fiddle. It begins in Sweden, soon the stage for medieval-religious race riots which force [...]

Non-fiction: Richard E. Byrd: Alone (Island Press, 1938/2003)
This was one of the last Antarctic classics I had yet to read, an account of Admiral Byrd’s stay alone in 1934 at the Advance Base weather station. Staying alone through the Antarctic winter proved to be hazardous, and most of the time Byrd had to struggle with [...]

Non-fiction: Ranulph Fiennes: Mind Over Matter (Delacorte Press, 1993)
Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud attempted to cross the Antarctic continent manhauling unsupported in the 1992-93 season. Unsupported means that they pulled all of their food and equipment all the way from coast to coast, breaking the record for the longest unsupported polar journey in the process. [...]

Non-fiction: Jerri Nielsen with Maryanne Vollers: Ice Bound (Ebury Press, 2001)
I’ve already talked about Ice Bound the movie here, based on this very book. The book is Dr Jerri Nielsen’s own account of her time as the winter-over doctor at the U.S. South Pole station. She was stricken with breast cancer, administered chemotherapy to herself [...]

Non-fiction: Mike Stroud: Shadows on the Wasteland (Penguin, 1994)
The copy I got from Amazon’s used books is signed! The book also has an unusually poetic title, with the reference to the T.S. Eliot poem Stroud also quotes at the beginning of the book:
Who is the third who walks alwaus beside you?
When I count, there are [...]

Kaverini ja rikoskumppanini Mike Pohjola oli keskusteluohjelma Mariassa uuden kirjansa tiimoilta keskiviikkona3.9.2008:

RPGnet has a review by Ryan Paddy of this year’s Knudebook Playground Worlds. Here’s what he has to say about my article, The Age of Indulgence:
Juhana Pettersson is a funny guy, given to mock-serious writings. Here he discusses the potential of larp as a vehicle for physical indulgence. He gives some real larp examples ranging [...]