Non-fiction: Herbert G. Ponting: The Great White South (Cooper Square Press, 2001, orig. 1921) This is yet another account of Scott’s doomed final Antarctic expedition, this time by the photographer Herbert Ponting. Ponting is one of the two famous photographers of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Frank Hurley is Continue Reading
Books
Review: Playing Reality
Non-fiction: ed. Elge Larsson: Playing Reality (Interacting Arts, 2010) Playing Reality is the book of this year’s Knutpunkt roleplaying conference, held in Sweden. It’s published by the Swedish participatory art collective Interacting Arts and edited by the grand old man of Nordic art larp, Elge Larsson. It’s available for free Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #96 – The Survivor
Novel: Thomas Keneally: The Survivor (Angus & Robertson Ltd, 1969) Thomas Keneally’s The Survivor is the second Antarctic novel by the same author featured in this blog. The first was Victim of the Aurora. It’s the story of an aging university man who was the only survivor of an ill-fated Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #94 – White-Out
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 Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #92 – The Antarctic Express
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 Continue Reading
Ikuisuuden laakso ja Itran kaupunki
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 Continue Reading
Research Blog Antarctica #91 – This Everlasting Silence
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 Continue Reading
Pix or didn’t happen
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 Continue Reading
Antarctic Research Blog #85 – Where Hell Freezes Over
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, Continue Reading
Antarctic Research Blog #83 – The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica
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 Continue Reading