Two Infocult interests coincided in a single book. Our polar music exploration met a recent Kim Stanley Robinson reading as I read the latter's Antarctica (1998). I remember choosing not to read it when it came out, as I was disappointed by the later Mars novels (unworthy of their excellent first, Red Mars). And there are quite a few connections, like feral utopians heading to a planetary ice cap to live, and exploring the love of a forbidding landscape.
There are also connections with later books. Charactes (Phil Chase), titles ("Science in the Capitol"), and many themes recur in his global warming novels, for instance.
The novel follows a set of characters who visit, work in, or live in Antarctica. Their paths intersect on the way to experiencing an act of ecotage. This classic historical novel framework, complete with representatives of various classes and political sectors, sketches out the lived world of the polar continent at a moment in time (the near future).
The historical record of polar exploration is a persistent occupation of all characters. While occupying a great deal of text, this approach never bogs down, since the continent's human record is so thin, and the explorations so vividly connected to daily life.
The novel glories in the landscape, celebrating its views, temperature, sublimity, and especially language. Words dot the text, eliciting a different world in classic sf fashion: firn, dolerite, mawsoni, nunataks, hoosh, woo.
I can't remember if Robinson uses this phrase elsewhere, but Antarctica is aimed at "Gotterdammerung capitalism," which describes global markets devouring planetary resources, and hastening catastrophic global warming (35 and elsewhere; repeated by a very different political character at 442). The continent appears as an area of resistance to this movement, generally, although the concluding political scenes are unfortunately one-sides in argument and political representation.
This continental-political device does allow for some nice lines, like:
It's a dog-eat-dog world, especially if you shoot half your huskies and feed them to the rest (177)
I read this in ideal circumstances: very, very hot and humid Carolina summer weather, and on my first big wilderness hike.
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