Antarctica
A Novel
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3.8 • 24 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning author of the Mars trilogy takes readers to the last pure wilderness on Earth in this powerful and majestic novel.
“Antarctica may well be the best novel of the best ecological novelist around.”—Locus
It is a stark and inhospitable place, where the landscape itself poses a challenge to survival, yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers.
Now Antarctica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty which protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antarctica’s resources to be plundered, its eerie beauty to be savaged. As politicians wrangle over its fate, major corporations begin probing for its hidden riches. Adventurers come, as they have for more than a century, seeking the wild, untamed land even as they endanger it with their ever-growing numbers. And radical environmentalists carry out a covert campaign of sabotage to reclaim the land from those who would destroy it for profit. All who come here have their own agenda, and all will fight to ensure their vision of the future for the remote and awe-inspiring world at the South Pole.
Customer Reviews
Loved it
I enjoy everything I have read by Kim Stanley Robinson, so, as usual, I trusted him and let the book carry me. It was a leap of faith in this case, because for the first half of this pretty long book, nothing much happened. People went out on the ice and snow and didn’t have mishaps. It was mostly description of the Antarctic, the geography, the inhabitants, the early polar expeditions. (Those early guys had mishaps aplenty, but the contemporary trekkers had GPS, and radar to show them where crevasses were, and satellite imagery, and self-warming gloves and space suits with food and water.) And then, well, things got interesting in a hurry. A real south polar adventure, with a healthy topping of environmentalism.