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Fiction: M.E. Morris: the Icemen (Presidio Press 1988) This is one of the strangest Antarctica books I’ve read. It’s ostensibly a techno-thriller about Nazis on the ice, the last remnants of the Third Reich moving from Argentina to found their own country in neutral territory. The Nazis are planning to Continue Reading

Fiction film: Bob Saget: Farce of the Penguins (U.S.A. 2007) A rather unfunny parody movie about the French nature documentary March of the Penguins. It uses actual penguin footage with various celebrities voice-acting the characters. If you want to see Samuel L. Jackson, Alyson Hannigan and penguin-related anal sex jokes Continue Reading

Non-fiction: William A. Cassidy: Meteorites, Ice, and Antarctica (Cambridge University Press, 2003) A general reader about meteorites and the American meteorite-hunting program in Antarctica. It’s an interesting, readable book. I wasn’t particularly interested in meteorites before, but this book managed to sell its subject in a way that it seemed Continue Reading

Fiction film: Koreyoshi Kurahara: Antarctica (Japan, 1983) One of the two great, old school Antarctic movie classics, along with the Thing. I’ve already seen the U.S. remake of this movie, Eight Below, so it was wonderful to finally get my hands on the original. It doesn’t disappoint. It’s a movie Continue Reading

Non-fiction: Peter Hillary & John E. Elder: In the Ghost Country – a Lifetime spent on the Edge (Free Press, 2003) What a rarity: A novel kind of an Antarctica book. What starts as the usual sports narrative of accomplishment typical of modern-day accounts of expeditions attempting to reach the Continue Reading

Non-fiction: Lynne Cox: Swimming to Antarctica (2004, Harcourt) A professional autobiography of the long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox, this is really a quite engaging book about swimming in various, increasingly inhospitable environments. The connection to Antarctica is only a part of the book. She swims to the continent from a mile Continue Reading

Documentary film: Davis Guggenheim: An Inconvenient Truth (U.S.A. 2006) A documentary about Al Gore’s slideshow about global warming, this is a good propaganda movie hammering its points in very well. given the subject, its not surprising that Gore talks a bit about Antarctica and the melting of the icecap, and Continue Reading

Documentary film: Werner Herzog: The Wild Blue Yonder (U.K. U.S.A. France, Germany, 2005) Herzog’s semi-documentary science fiction fable contains a lot of footage shot underwater beneath the Antarctic ice. It’s really quite interesting, especially in terms of the colors.

Non-fiction: Peter Matthiessen: End of the Earth (National Geographic Society, 2003) This is the worst Antarctica book I’ve read so far. Its crimes include pointlessness and a lack of content, but far worse is its surprising ability to resist reading. Whether I’m tired or feeling sharp, after reading half a Continue Reading

Non-fiction: Roland Huntford: Shackleton (Abacus 1996, orig. 1985) One of Roland Huntford’s three massive biographies of the explorers of the Heroic Age, I left this for the last because Shackleton is so fashionable these days, I’ve gone through his story three times so far already, once in Shackleton’s own account, Continue Reading