Dust may settle unanswered questions on Antarctica

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning Mars trilogy, is one of the most original and visionary writers of fiction today. Now, in his latest novel, he takes us to a harsh, alien landscape covered by a sheet of ice two miles deep. This is no distant planet--it is the last pure wilderness on earth.

A stark and inhospitable place, its landscape poses a challenge to survival; yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers. Now Antarctica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty that protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antarctica's resources and eerie beauty to be plundered. As politicians and corporations move...

Her exquisite photographs of landscapes, wildlife, and the abandoned huts of early explorers are juxtaposed with glimpses of scientists who seek to understand Antarctica’s past and future and the support staff who facilitate their work. Myers’ journal entries provide a warm introduction to the people and places of this harsh yet surprisingly fragile environment.

Science-related sidebars written by New York Times writer Sandra Blakeslee, literary quotations, and excerpts from historic and contemporary sources...

Now packed with three additional destination sections, as well as even more breathtaking color photographs, wildlife descriptions, and detailed area maps, this updated edition to a bestselling Antarctican travel guide includes fascinating, full accounts of interesting places, spectacular landscapes, and local plants and wildlife—from penguins and other birds to whales, seals, and myriad mammals. A definitive field guide to Antarctica, this book caters to South Pole visitors traveling by luxury liner, adventure cruise, or private boat. Written by experienced Antarctic travelers who are recognized experts in the continent's wildlife, conservation, and political history, every page offers gorgeous color photographs of the great white south. Special...

Both a beautiful and practical guidebook, Bradt’s Antarctica Wildlife has remained a perennial favourite with cruise voyagers to this remarkable continent and a book suitable for natural history lovers to dip into.

Is it the pristine but harsh frontier where noble scientific missions are accomplished? Or an insane corporate bureaucracy where hundreds of workers are cooped together in hi-tech communes with all the soul of a suburban office park?

Welcome to Big Dead Place, a grunt's eye view of America's Antarctic Program that shatters the well-worn clichés of polar literature. Here the heroic camaraderie and romantic desolation give way to sterile buildings populated by characters like a crazed manager who fills his boots with antifreeze, the greasepaint-obsessed worker Boozy the Clown, ghosts that haunt the food freezer, and horny employees who grab rare private moments coupling on the altar in the Chapel of the Snows.

The Foreword is by Eirik...