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FIRE_DOWN_BELOW

                                             March 14, 2010
                                             March 16, 2010

In November of last year, I read:
Kim Stanley Robinson's, "Antarctica",


Not at all a bad job...

For me, this was an introduction to
Antarctic exploration history and trivia,
and it's various controversies-- it had me       One of the interesting
going off reading non-fiction and watching       details: Scott was
documentaries, and I found that Robinson         astoundingly clueless.
did a good job of covering the subject.          Amundsen beat him to the
                                                 pole because he had spent
                                                 some time living in Arctic
   This is a near-future science                 regions, learning from the
   fiction story, centering on                   locals.
   some odd "terrorist" activity
   down in Antarctica...                             There's something
                                                     remarkably British
      Much of the story                              about diving off into
      concerns the main                              the unknown without
      characters' struggles to                       knowing what you're
      survive with the safety                        doing, *or* without
      net knocked out from                           making any effort to
      under them by sabotage.                        learn from the people
                                                     who know.
      Robinson is, as always,
      very strong on winter                          Apparently
      mountaineering material,                       Shackleton had
      and this all works well.                       similar problems:
                                                     sailing off into
            FREE_WANDERERS                           the ice in a boat
                                                     the whalers could
                                                     tell was no good
                                                     for the job.


         "... there was no correlation between doing something
         dangerous and being courageous, just as there was no
         correlation between suffering and virtue."  -- p. 324, hdbk


             The story goes on to the sort of
             Utopian ending you might expect from
             the author of "Green Mars": there's a
             sort of labor revolution in Antarctica
             and the formation of a new, more
             egalitarian regime (if not exactly a
             "Free Republic of Antarctica").





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