The Best Journey in the World : An Antarctic Story

Interweaving memoir and good old-fashioned ice adventure, Kim Stanley Robinson takes readers along on journeys that have happened before and journeys that may never happen again.

In May of 1911, Robert Scott and the twenty-four men under his command said goodbye to the sun and settled in for the long Antarctic winter. When the sun returned in September, they were going to try to become the first people to reach the South Pole. However, a week past the winter solstice, Scott's second-in-command took a team on a trip to Cape Crozier to man-haul two sledges through the perpetual night of the Antarctic winter, exposed to the coldest temperatures human beings had ever travelled in. This side trip was, at best, a dangerous distraction and, at worst, a disaster. Yet, chronicled by zoological assistant and major expedition funder Apsley Cherry-Garrard, it became The Worst Journey in the World, one of the best adventure books ever written.

Kim Stanley Robinson first read Cherry-Garrard's book in his twenties and reread it in 1995, as part of his preparations for the Antarctic trip he made that year as research for his Mars novels. It was a dream excursion: he travelled around the continent by snowmobile, helicopter, and airplane. All the while, Cherry's book loomed larger and larger in Robinson's mind, and he tried to follow in their ill-fated footsteps.

Ultimately, in The Best Journey in the World, we see Robinson stepping onto the ice and finding an earthly holy place. As he searches for what can and cannot be found again, he takes readers on a journey of realization that is not just about being the first to get somewhere, but about falling in love with what the world has to offer us. Being with people who also feel a kinship to a place worthy of preserving is itself an act of devotion.

Replete with gorgeous photographs taken in a place where many will never set foot, and woven throughout with Robinson's sharp, funny, and personal voice, prepare to take the best journey in the world.