Antarctica (Hardcover)

by Kim Stanley Robinson (Author)
Key Phrases: worst journey, banana sled, crevasse detector, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mac Town, South Pole (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
In the near future, Wade Norton has been sent to Antarctica by Senator Phil Chase to investigate rumors of environmental sabotage. He arrives on the frozen continent and immediately begins making contact with the various scientific and political factions that comprise Antarctic society. What he finds is an interesting blend of inhabitants who don't always mesh well but who all share a common love of Antarctica and a fierce devotion to their life there. He also begins to uncover layers of Antarctic culture that have been kept hidden from the rest of the world, and some of them are dangerous indeed. Things are brought to a head when the saboteurs--or "ecoteurs" as they call themselves--launch an attack designed to drive humans off the face of Antarctica. This is Kim Stanley Robinson's first book since his award-winning Mars trilogy, and while some of the themes may be familiar to seasoned Robinson readers, the book is never less than engrossing. As usual Robinson does a masterful job with the setting of his story, and anyone interested in Antarctica won't want to miss this one. --Craig Engler

From Publishers Weekly
In the early 21st century, things are beginning to change in Antarctica. Scientists still come down to the American base at McMurdo to do research, but they now bump shoulders with tourists hoping to retrace the treks of early explorers. More seriously, with the world's oil fields almost depleted, multinational corporations are jockeying for position, conducting secret explorations for oil and spending millions to defeat the renewal of the Antarctic Treaty, which has reserved the continent for purely scientific research for half a century. And other, even more secretive groups apparently haunt the Antarctic outback as well: feral human societies and radical environmentalists whose motives are only partly understood. Antarctica is undergoing major climactic change, too, perhaps the most dramatic example of the global warming that has turned much of the world's former temperate zone into a steam bath. The Ross Ice Shelf has largely broken up and the enormously greater Antarctic icesheet may be about to follow suit. Robinson (Blue Mars) brings to this novel a passionate concern for landscape, ecology and the effects of the "Gotterdammerung capitalism" that he sees as the most serious threat to the survival of our species. His major charactersAa U.S. senator's aide, a professional Antarctic mountaineer and a misfit doing grunt labor at McMurdoAare well drawn, but ultimately the novel is about the land itself. Moving back and forth between breathtaking descriptions of the alien, out-of-scale beauty of Antarctica, gripping tales of adventure on the ice and astute analyses of the ecopolitics of the southernmost continent, Robinson has created another superb addition to what is rapidly becoming one of the most impressive bodies of work in SF. (July) FYI: Each of Robinson's last three novels, Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, won either a Hugo or a Nebula.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; 1st ed/1st printing edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553100637
• ISBN-13: 978-0553100631
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,057,571 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Different planet familiar story still enjoyable, April 26, 2002

By	Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Antarctica (Mass Market Paperback)

After his Mars trilogy, just about anything Kim Stanley Robinson was going to do was highly anticipated. The worst thing he could have done was try and repeat his earlier trilogy just in a different setting. To his credit, he did try something different here, but not different enough at times to really make the book come alive. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautifully written and passionate book . . . in the acknowledgements Robinson mentions that he spent several months on the continent and the staggering amount of research shows . . . even if you've never been to Antarctica this book will make you feel like you have. Every mountain every cold gust of wind every pure blue sky is described beautifully here and that love of the land comes through both in the writing itself and the characters. The story, however, feels like a slight retread of the Mars trilogy, with the underlying conflict being whether to keep the land pure and unsullied or to exploit it as best we're able. To this end several plots spin around showing the different aspects, from the tentative oil drilling to the political angles to the scientific and the people just visiting. This crosssectioning almost defeats the book because with so many characters and views you don't get to know the characters as well as you did in the trilogy, only in several moments do they really come alive to the reader and the sparks start to fly. So the book functions mostly like a travelogue, albeit a wonderfully written one and the passion here just about makes up for the plot, but there are times when you'll sit back and wonder if the book is missing something important. The tension that drove the Mars trilogy is absent here, either because the setting isn't as futuristic or simply because he's trying to do more with less . . . but in the end it's entertaining and even a slight book by Robinson is miles better than anyone's best at this point. Don't expect to get as excited by it as his earlier books have done for you, but pick it up anyway. The pleasures it offers may not be new, but they're pleasurable nonetheless.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining portrait of a remote place and its people, August 5, 1998

By A Customer

This book is less a story taking place on and more of a portrait of Antarctica in the future, and the people who are so enthralled by the place that their passion for the continent, its history, and their vision of their place in it comes across on every page. Cleverly mixing the continent's short history with the book's current characters and issues, Robinson has added immensly to the growing literature, both fiction and non-fiction, about Antarctica. THe story however, is less important than the setting and the characters, and this is the book's flaw. It makes the book seem a bit long at times, though just when our interest is waning, something dramatic happens, or we become absorbed in adventures of past Antarctic explorers such as Shackleton, Amundsen, or SCott.The authors descriptions of the people and the place are undoubtedly its strong point. An enjoyable read. Also recommended is Elizabeth Arthur's Antarctic Navigation, a work of fiction on the continent and one woman's obsession with it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mars Trilogy redux, June 1, 1998

By	John McKnight (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'd been eagerly awaiting Robinson's new book - maybe too much so, admittedly, given the expectations he'd raised with the magnificent Mars Trilogy. But Antarctica is a disappointment: there's about 60 pages of story in the 400-page novel. Characters and situations are watered-down versions of their Mars analogs. Disappointingly, he hasn't advanced his program for economic, social and spiritual reform: I was hoping for something more than was presented in Blue Mars, and got the same, but less. One real strength of the book is his facility with creating tomorrow's future, in describing technology that doesn't quite exist yet, but is perfectly familiar. While passages of his prose are brilliant, in Antarctica his impulse to include every kitchen sink of his research really gets the better of him. Still, he's Robinson, and I don't know of anybody else with as lucid and passionate an opposition to modern capitalism. Antarctica is worth reading, but if you want real brilliance, re-read the Mars Trilogy