Antarctica Fiction

Today in history, the lowest temperature ever was recorded.  -128.6F was recorded at a monitoring station in Antarctica on July 21st, 1983.  Since much of the US is currently suffering in a heat wave, I thought it would be nice to cool down with some Antarctic fiction.

The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick - A magical, intoxicating debut novel, both intimate and epic, that intertwines the past, present, and future of two lovers bound by the passing of great comets overhead and a coterie of remarkable ancestors. Roisin and François are immediately drawn to each other when they meet at a remote research base on the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica. At first glance, the pair could not be more different. Older by a few years, Roisin, a daughter of Ireland and a peripatetic astronomer, joins the science team to observe the fracturing of a comet overhead. François, the base's chef, has just left his birthplace in Bayeux, France, for only the second time in his life. Yet devastating tragedy and the longing for a fresh start, which they share, as well as an indelible but unknown bond that stretches back centuries, connect them to each other. Helen Sedgwick carefully unfolds their surprisingly intertwined paths, moving forward and back through time to reveal how these lovers' destinies have long been tied to each other by the skies--the arrival of comets great and small. In telling Roisin and François's story, Sedgwick illuminates the lives of their ancestors, showing how strangers can be connected and ghosts can be real, and how the way we choose to see the world can be as desolate or as beautiful as the comets themselves. A mesmerizing, skillfully crafted, and emotionally perceptive novel that explores the choices we make, the connections we miss, and the ties that inextricably join our fates, The Comet Seekers reflects how the shifting cosmos unite us all through life, beyond death, and across the whole of time.

Dead Men by Richard Pierce - The discovery of Captain Scott’s body in the Antarctic in 1912 started a global obsession with him as a man and an explorer. But a central mystery remains—why did he and his companions remain in a tent just eleven miles from the safety of their food and fuel depot during their last ten days?
 Birdie Bowers, an infamously secretive painter, was named after one of Scott’s companions. A century after his death, she is determined to discover what really happened to him. On her way to view some of the relics from Scott’s expedition, she collapses and is rescued by Adam, a bored computer expert—who falls in love with her so completely that he agrees to travel with her to the Antarctic to discover the site of Scott’s tent, now encased beneath thirty yards of ice.

Deception Island by Judith Boss - While at an archaeology dig in Afghanistan, Rachel St. Claire, an evolutionary anthropologist, comes across a pendant with strange shifting symbols. Not long after, she receives an urgent call from her colleague, Dr. Grace McAllister, who insists that she come with her and her nephew, Trevor, a handsome polar geophysicist, to Antarctica to examine an unusual body that was found in an ice cave. Before Rachel can respond, bandits sent by the ruthless Major General Braun storm the site. Just as they are about to seize Rachel, a helicopter appears with Trevor who has been sent by his Aunt to bring Rachel to Antarctica. Trevor soon falls in love with Rachel who, unfortunately, already has a fiance. Little does she know that her fiance is part of a group of bioterrorists who are engaged in secret genetic experiments in an abandoned World War II Nazi base under the Antarctic ice and who are after the pendant and Rachel. 

Dry Ice by Bill Evans & Marianna Jameson - In the frozen heart of Antarctica sits TESLA, a secret weather "research" station designed by Greg Simpson for Flint Agro-Chemical, a world-spanning agribusiness. Only a few people know that TESLA is creating weather all over the globe, granting Flint huge harvests and punishing the company's rivals with hailstorms and drought. Even fewer know that from time to time, Flint and TESLA help the Pentagon by providing just the right weather for a military operation.
When Greg strikes a secret deal with the Pentagon, Flint executives decide to replace him with the beautiful and ultra-intelligent Tess Beauchamp. Arriving, Tess is surprised to find that Greg's second-in-command, Nik Forde, is even better looking than he was when they had a brief affair, ten years ago.
Tess doesn't have long to worry about the difficulties of a workplace relationship. Greg has barely left Antarctica--escorted by Flint security--when his secret, encrypted computer programs activate, sending fatal weather across the globe, striking every continent's grain-growing region and livestock-farming area. Tess and Nik must crack Greg's code and stop TESLA before the US government--unwilling to sit by and watch the planet's agriculture be destroyed by storm and fire, avalanche, and tsunami--launches a nuclear missile at the TESLA base.

Everland by Rebecca Hunt - In 1913, two seasoned explorers and one scientist (Napps, Millet-Bass, and Dinners) disembark the Kismet and row their dinghy toward an unmapped island that Napps plans to dub “Everland.” The sky turns dark almost as soon as the Kismet pulls away, leaving them caught in a violent storm without recourse. Dinners, the frail scientist with no field experience, becomes a burden to the two explorers, and as the numbing cold sets in, he begins to descend into madness. Their excursion becomes legendary: Napps is remembered as cold, unfeeling, nearly evil; Millet-Bass as a reckless adventurer; and Dinners as an innocent casualty. But history has a way of skewing reality.
 100 years later, two academics and one field assistant (Decker, Brix, and Jess) depart for Everland to study colonies of penguins and fur seals, but their trip soon begins to echo the 1913 trip. Will they all survive? And if they do, what will their individual legacies be? A stunning tale of adventure, human endurance, and the way history works, Everland questions whether our ideas about the meaning and value of life change when confronted with the knife-edge of survival. 

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond - It is only at the end of the world--among the glacial mountains, cleaving icebergs, and frigid waters of Antarctica--where Deb Gardner and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For the few blissful weeks they spend each year studying the habits of emperor and Adélie penguins, Deb and Keller can escape the frustrations and sorrows of their separate lives and find solace in their work and in each other. But Antarctica, like their fleeting romance, is tenuous, imperiled by the world to the north.
A new travel and research season has just begun, and Deb and Keller are ready to play tour guide to the passengers on the small expedition ship that ferries them to their research destination. But this year, Keller fails to appear on board. Then, shortly into the journey, Deb's ship receives an emergency signal from the Australis, a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters of the Southern Ocean. Soon Deb's role will change from researcher to rescuer; among the crew of that sinking ship, Deb learns, is Keller.

The Nature of Ice by Robyn Mundy - Freya has come to Antarctica ostensibly to undertake a photographic expedition to retrace Frank Hurley's iconic photographs--but also to escape a stifling relationship. Once she is there, though, living in the cramped and close confines of Davis Station, the extraordinary world of Antarctica gets under her skin and she starts to unfurl, finding her world change in ways she would never previously had thought possible. Weaving in a vivid recreation of Douglas Mawson's ill-fated 1911- 1914 Antarctic expedition into the contemporary story of a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage, this is a poetic, multi-stranded novel of present and past, hope and tragedy, love and loss. It is not only a love story and a heart-stopping, intensely moving polar adventure story, but also a story of place, bringing to vivid life the extraordinary landscape of Antarctica, the frozen continent that intrigues us all. 

The Silent Sea by Clive Cussler with Jack Du Brul - In December 7, 1941, five brothers exploring a shaft on an island off the coast of Washington State make an extraordinary discovery, but a tragic accident suspends further investigation. In the present, Juan Cabrillo and his Oregon team, chasing the remanants of a crashed satellite in the Argentine jungle, stumble upon a shocking revelation. His efforts to untangle the mystery lead first to that island, and then much farther back, to an ancient Chinese expedition and a curse more than 500 years old.  Book 7 of 14 in the Oregon Files

Subhuman by Michael McBride - 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 . . . 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 . . . When a series of sound waves trigger the ancient organisms, a new kind of evolution begins. Latching onto a human host--crossbreeding with human DNA--a long-extinct life form is reborn. Its kind has not walked the earth for thousands of years. Its instincts are fiercer, more savage, than any predator alive. And its prey are the scientists who unleashed it, the humans who spawned it, and the tender living flesh on which it feeds . . . Book 1 of 2 in the Unit 51 series

Sun at Midnight by Rosie Thomas - From the critically acclaimed author and 'master storyteller' (Cosmopolitan), a sweeping saga of loss and redemption that centers on Alice, who as a scientist, relies on method, precision, and tangible proof. But when her relationship with Oxford artist Peter Brown collapses spectacularly, she is forced to use her skills to evaluate her own life for the first time. In her thirties, childless, and tied to Oxford by her work, it's time to break away. Alice accepts an invitation to travel to the southernmost point of the earth, Antarctica. Upon arrival, she is awestruck by the strangeness of a continent painted in shades of blue and white, lit by an unearthly permanent sunlight. And nothing has prepared her for the close confines of a small base shared with eight men and one other woman. It's in these close quarters that she develops a strong attraction to a man shrouded in danger and mystery. It's in this beautiful but unforgiving environment that Alice discovers something that could change her life forever . . . if she survives.