I've ripped through quite a few books since the New Year.
Three that come to mind:
The
Worst Journey in the World - by Apsley Cherry-Garrard: Haunting story of Robert Falcon Scott's 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition to reach the South Pole, which was voted "The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told" by National Geographic. Whilst the author gives the doomed Scott plenty of coverage, the real heart of the book is the harrowing mid-winter journey made by Wilson, Bowers (who both died with Scott 12 miles from safety) and A C-G to Cape Crozier for the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The conditions those men endured (down to -76 degrees with winds up to and including hurricane force) in friendship and bravery are simply beyond my imagination.
Quote:
"And there seemed not one chance in a million that we should ever see our tent again [it had been blown away by a hurricane]. We were 900 feet up on the mountain side, and the wind blew about as hard as a wind can blow straight out to sea. First there was a steep slope, so hard that a pick made little impression upon it, so slippery that if you started down in finnesko you never could stop: this ended in a great ice-cliff some hundreds of feet high, and then came miles of pressure ridges, crevassed and tumbled, in which you might as well look for a daisy as a tent: and after that the open sea. The chances, however, were that the tent had just been taken up into the air and dropped somewhere in this sea well on the way to New Zealand. Obviously the tent was gone.
Face to face with real death one does not think of the things that torment the bad people in the tracts, and fill the good people with bliss. I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.
I wanted those years over again. What fun I would have with them: what glorious fun! It was a pity. Well has the Persian said that when we come to die we, remembering that God is merciful, will gnaw our elbows with remorse for thinking of the things we have not done for fear of the Day of Judgment.
And I wanted peaches and syrup—badly. We had them at the hut, sweeter and more luscious than you can imagine. And we had been without sugar for a month. Yes—especially the syrup.
Thus impiously I set out to die, making up my mind that I was not going to try and keep warm, that it might not take too long, and thinking I would try and get some morphia from the medical case if it got very bad. Not a bit heroic, and entirely true! Yes! comfortable, warm reader. Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dying." |
The author's prose is at times both beautiful and evocative. I could almost reach out and touch the terrifying and desolate Antarctic landscape. Sadly for him he never fully recovered from the environment's brutalities and the loss of his friends. It was only through writing this account that he managed in some way to exorcise his demons and the guilt he endured over whether he could have done more to save his friends.
For anyone interested, The Worst Journey in the World is available for free download (the rights have now expired) at
Project Gutenberg.
The Terror by Dan Simmons: Door-stopping fictionalised account of the Franklin Expedition (which perished with the loss of over 200 men in search of the "Northwest Passage" through the North Canadian wastelands) with a supernatural twist. I've read a couple of books on the Franklin Expedition (including John Geiger & Owen Beattie's steadfastly forensic "Frozen in Time", which asserts that the men were poisoned by the lead in their food tins) and I was very surprised at the amount of research Simmons had done for this. Names, dates, places all tally up perfectly and the personalities of the main characters (Franklin, Crozier and Fitzjames) are pretty much in accordance with accepted history.
Simmons paints Crozier as a heroic, complex, resourceful and fiercely resolute man passed over for promotion by the class establishment because of his Irish roots. Pitched against a supernatural foe of unrelenting savageness he battles to save lives and stop his men descending into inhumanity. I enjoyed the parts devoted to Crozier. He's brilliantly written.
Some of the other characters I was less enthused by - especially the "rat faced" Cornelius Hickey (the human villain) whose evil can be explained by expediency and little else. I'm also a bit uneasy about Simmons' decision to draw him as the only homosexual (apart from the briefly mentioned Harry Peglar, who doesn't 'practice' at sea and is coincidentally(?) honorable and good). There are a number of authors out there who appear to think that it's ok to paint villains as gay purely because it will evoke a feeling of cheap revulsion in readers who find it uncomfortable. I really do hope Simmons isn't one of them.
But my main criticism of the book is the supernatural premise: it simply isn't necessary. The story of the Franklin Expedition - which includes poisoning, scurvy, starvation and ultimately cannibalism - is horrific enough without the added baggage of a mystical super-predator hunting the men out on the ice. It exploits their suffering and depreciates their bravery in the face of inconceivable madness.
Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer: Award-winning SF tale of two aging scientists (married) who are given the opportunity of rejuvenation treatment so that they can decipher the response to a message broadcast by them sixty years earlier to an alien civilization. Unfortunately, the treatment only works for the male character and they are forced to come to terms with the massive age-gap that exists between them.
For me it's a fascinating premise tragically ruined by the limitations of the author. Sawyer can't write for shit. His prose reaches levels of clumsiness beyond even that held by Larry Niven (which is saying something). The central duo demonstrate little realism or subtlety and would probably find it difficult to remain upright before a gnat's fart.
and it's a good bit of fun so far. Going to knock this out before moving onto my next book.
