Non-fiction: James Gorman: Ocean Enough and Time (HarperCollins Publishers, 1995) The pompously titled Ocean Enough and Time is actually an ok Antarctic book, another product of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s decision to take artists and writers to Antarctica. James Gorman is an editor and a journalist, but his writing Continue Reading
Antarctica
Research Blog Antarctica #121: The Seeds of Doom
TV: Dr Who: The Seeds of Doom (1976) The Seeds of Doom is a six-episode storyline in the 13th season of the British tv series Dr Who. British scientists working at an Antarctic base discover strange, organic objects in the ice, and take them inside for study. They turn out Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #120: Eight Men in a Crate
Non-fiction: Anthea Arnold: Eight Men in a Crate (Erskine Press, 2007) Also a contender for the best title on an Antarctic book, Eight Men in a Crate is the story of a supporting party on the British Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-1957. While expedition leader Vivian Fuchs and mountain climber Edmund Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #119: Ice Cores
Non-fiction: David Haden: Ice Cores (2011) Ice Cores is a collection of miscellaneous notes and ephemera about H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. Billing itself as a collection of essays, it’s barely a book at all, and the essays are just a jumble of notes and suppositions regarding Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #118: Going to Antarctica
Non-fiction: Robert B. Yonaitis: Going to Antarctica (2012) Going to Antarctica is a travel story self-published on the Kindle. The American writer Robert B. Yonaitis goes on a cruise off the Antarctic coast, and in one sense the book is banal: we learn what happens every day of the trip, Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #117: The Third Reich in Antarctica
Non-fiction: Cornelia Lüdecke & Colin Summerhayes: The Third Reich in Antarctica (Erskine Press, 2012) The German Antarctic expedition of 1938-39 is famous for being the “Nazi Expedition”. This book goes through the voyage of the expedition ship Schwabenland in academic style, with plenty of pictures and illustrations. The tone of Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #116: Ice Station
Novel: Matthew Reilly: Ice Station (St. Martin’s, 2000) Ice Station is an action thriller about an American Antarctic research base that discovers something valuable under the ice, and various governments around the world who send military forces to capture it. It’s mostly composed of improbable action scenes. The book is Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #115: Fram Museum
(Photo: Maria Pettersson) That’s a photo of me on the deck of the Fram, an exploration vessel used by both Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. It was Amundsen’s ship on his conquest of the South Pole. We visited the Fram Museum in Oslo last weekend. The museum features the ship Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #114: Little America
Non-fiction: Richard E. Byrd: Little America (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1930) Little America is the U.S. explorer Richard Byrd’s account of his first Antarctic expedition. I’ve written before about Byrd’s two other Antarctic books, the account of the second expedition, called Discovery, and the account of Byrd’s winter alone (called Alone) Continue Reading
Stats for polar bears and space hamsters
Jukka Särkijärvi created stats for both polar bears and space hamsters for Valley of Eternity: There are many strange things in the Antarctic, and the giant space hamster is probably the strangest. This white-furred rodent is the size of an elephant seal, but much quicker in its movements. Nobody is Continue Reading