I'm a science fiction writer. If you write about time travel, one of the things you have to worry about is changing the past, the ‘gun for a dinosaur’ effect. If you go to the past and kill that dinosaur, will it affect the present? Maybe that dinosaur was the ancestor of all mammals. So, if you want to steal something from the past and bring it to now, you have to choose carefully. Something that has left no biological footprint. When I got that far, I remembered that Titus Oates walked off into the storm in Antarctica, never to be seen again, to save his companions. His body is still out there, frozen in a glacier … or is it?
This is one of the greatest memoirs of Capt. Robert Scott’s last and fatal expedition to Antarctica, written by expedition member Apsley Cherry-Garrard. The ‘worst expedition’ in the title is, believe it or not, not even the one where Scott’s entire party starved and froze to death on the way back from the South Pole. It’s about an earlier jaunt by the explorers to try and acquire the egg of the emperor penguin. Only after that did Scott make his shot for the Pole, get beaten to the punch by Roald Amundsen, and then died, trapped in his tent in a blizzard, on the way back. Even though everyone knows how it’s going to end, you can’t put Cherry’s account down. One of the great adventure narratives of all time.
A firsthand account of Scott's disastrous Antarctic expedition
The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey—draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott’s legendary expedition. Cherry himself would be among the search party that discovered the corpses of Scott and his men, who had long since perished from starvation and brutal cold. It is through Cherry’s insightful narrative…
Robert Scott was a failure, and beloved for it. He died like a British hero should, gallantly and writing it up in his journal. He, and the four other men who died with him, are memorialized all over Britain: plaques, statues, museums. Huntford is the first modern historian to kick a hole in that mythology, pointing out the many mistakes that Capt. Scott made that, cumulatively, doomed his quest for the South Pole. Was it really sensible, to put cavalry captain Titus Oates in charge of the ponies but then not let him choose the animals? For that matter, ponies? On a glacier? Huntford contrasts him to Scott’s rival the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who did everything right, breezed to the Pole with teams of sled dogs, and even gained weight on the way back.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
One of the things that made Scott’s expedition legendary was the photographs. His was the first scientific expedition to include a professional photographer on staff. Herbert Ponting used the cameras and glass plates of his time, and the images are stupendous. This book reproduces all the great ones, images that renovated the human imagination and which you can see to this day imitated in movies and special effects.
Ernest Shackleton was Scott’s rival and companion, the one who was smart enough not to die. A later Antarctic explorer, Sir Raymond Priestly, famously said, “For scientific discovery give me Scott. For speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen. But when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” Shackleton’s last expedition was the stuff of legend. His ship the Endurance was trapped in the ice for ten months, and finally crushed by the ice and sunk. Shackleton marshalled his men to march across the floes dragging their boat, and then they sailed across the polar seas to Elephant Island where they finally were rescued more than two years after they set out. It’s an almost unbelievable feat.
After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen, who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeyings—the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea. When I returned from the Nimrod Expedition on which we had to turn back from our attempt to plant the British flag on the South Pole, being beaten by stress of circumstances within ninety-seven miles of our goal, my mind turned to the crossing of the continent, for I was morally certain that either…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Author Susan Solomon is a senior scientist with the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. She has uncovered what I believe is the real reason why Scott’s party couldn’t stagger back to safety. In the polar regions, the reason is always the climate. Even if you prepare carefully and well, sometimes it’s just too cold for human life. Scott and four companions were fighting an unbeatable foe, and they knew it. They died gallantly anyway, which is why a hundred years later we haven’t forgotten them. Solomon’s book came out in 2001, and she brings the tools of modern climate science to bear on Scott’s fate.
"These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale." So penned Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1912 as he confronted defeat and death in the crippling subzero temperatures of Antarctica. In this riveting book, Susan Solomon finishes the interrupted tale of Scott and his British expedition, depicting the staggering 900-mile trek to the South Pole and resolving the debate over the journey's failure.
"An absorbing, fascinating read . . . a book that will appeal to the explorer in everyone."-Sally Ride
"Solomon argues her case well, in exact and graceful prose."-Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
He said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since. On March 16, 1912, British polar explorer Titus Oates commits suicide by walking out of his tent into an Antarctic blizzard, to save Robert Falcon Scott and the other members of the English exploration team. His body is never found — because he was snatched away into the year 2045 by scientists experimenting with a new faster-than-light drive.
The first section of this novel appeared as a novella in Analog Science Fiction magazine (April 2001) under the title “May Be Some Time.” It was a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo awards.
