Polar Fiction

Selected Literary and/or Historical Fiction
Pole	Year	Title	Author	Comment
S	1838	The Narrative of Arthur G Pym of Nantucket	Edgar Allen Poe	gothic sea novel follows boy who stows away on whaling ship
N	1864	English at the North Pole	Jules Verne	also known as The Purchase at the North Pole
N	1895	To Greenland and the Pole	William Gordon stables	inspired by Nansen
S	1897	Antarctic Mystery: The Sphinx of the Ice Fields	Jules Verne	sequel to Poe
N	1909	A Dash at the Pole	William Lyon Phelps	satire of Cook and Peary and race to North Pole
N	1909	First at the Pole	Frank Shaw	American and British teams race to the North Pole
S	1912	The Turnstile	Alfred E W Mason	polar explorer loosely based on Scott & Shackleton
S	1926	Spinster of this Parish	William Maxwell	Antarctic explorer loosely based on Shackleton
S	1927	The Woman Thou Gavest Me	Hall Caine	Polar explorer loosely based on Shacklton
S	1928	Over the Polar Ice	Eustace Adam	loosely based on first Byrd Antarctic expedition/flight to South Pole
S	1930	Lost at the South Pole	Franklin Dixon	loosely based on first Byrd Antarctic expedition/flight to South Pole
S	1931	Bird Life at the Pole	Wolcott Gibbs	satire on Byrd's first Antarctic expedition
S	1931	South of Zero	Margaret Ross	fictitious Antarctic expedition
S	1931	By Bicycle to the South Pole	Emilio Salgari	Italian, fiction British-American bicycling trip to South Pole
S	1935	The Man Who Deserted	Ward Copley	fictional Antarctic expedition
N	1947	The White Magic	John Keir Cross	based on Grinnell's serch for Franklin
N	1952	To the White North	Kathleen Fidler	about John Franklin's expeditions
N	1959	The Undiscovered Country	Jay & Audrey Walz	based on Elisha Kent Kane's Greenland expeditions
N	1960	Call of the Arctic	Robert Steelman
S	1964	Gabriel	Jo McDonald	'based on the 3rd French Antarctic Expedition to Adelie Land in 1952-53'
N	1968	A Dream in Polar Fog	Yuri Rytkheu	trans from Russian, set in 1910, an arctic sailor lives among the Chukchi people or northeastern Siberia. reprinted 2005
S	1970	The Survivor	Thomas Keneally	professor recalls surviving an earlier doomed Antarctic trip
S	1970	Cape of Storms	John Gordon Davis	A story of the last of the whaling fleets in Antarctica
N	1974	The Snowboys	Forrest Webb	fictional English & American expedition in Greenland
S	1976	The Race: A Novel of Polar Exploration	Kare Holt	trans from Norwegian, really interesting version of the race to South Pole
S	1978	Victim of the Aurora	Thomas Keneally	historical murder mystery on a British South Pole expedition in 1909. Villainous victim is a stereotyped predatory, untrustworthy, conniving homosexual man
S	1982	Sur	Ursula LeGuin	Fabulous short story from the New Yorker about women sledding to the South Pole, before the men. In LeGuin's "The Compass Rose" & other anthologies
S	1987	More Die of Heartbreak	Saul Bellow	not at the Poles but a major character has worked there. "Its not that you're so asocial, but a man who likes people doesn't wind up in the Antarctic"
N	1987	The Discovery of Slowness	Sten Nadolney	trans. from German (pub 1983), fictionalized biography of Sir John Franklin
N	1991	The Terrors of Ice and Darkness	Christoph Ransmayr	young Italian obsessed with recreating the Austro-Hungarian polar expedition of 1872-74
N	1992	Broken Lands: A Novel of Arctic Disaster	Robert Edric	about Sir John Franklin and the Northwest passage trips
N	1994	The Cage	Audrey Schulman	professional nature photographer in Arctic to shoot Polar Bears
N	1994	The Rifles	William Vollmann	about Franklin expedition, the forced relocation of Inuit families in the 1950s, and the effects of Western technology on indigenous peoples
S	1995	The Birthday Boys	Beryl Bainbridge	fictional account of Scott's expedition to South Pole
S	1995	Antarctic Navigation	Elizabeth Arthur	obsessed heroine wants to recreate voyage of RF Scott
S	1995	Heroes & Lovers: An Antarctic Obsession	Lucy Kavaler	suffragette marches to South Pole, to best her manly but sexist lover. Historical romantic fiction - "Great God this is an awful book", ugh.
N	1995	A Discovery of Strangers	Rudy Wiebe	fictional account of Franklin's overland expedition to Arctic Ocean
S	1997	Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition	Caroline Alexander	Juvi, "Journal" of Shakleton's cat
N	1999	Voyage of the Narwhal	Andrea Barrett	voyage to the arctic in search of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition
N	1999	The Ice Master	James Houston	novel of 1875 whaling expedition to the Arctic
S	1999	The Nanny and the Iceberg	Ariel Dorfman	sex, Chilean politics, and an Antarctic iceberg brought to the Sevilla World Expo for the Chilean Pavilion (Chilean author writing in English)
N	2000	North With Franklin	John Wilson	`The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames'; fictionalized account of Franklin expedition
N	2000	The Merry Widow	Meagan McKinney	historical romance, woman pretends to be widow of Arctic explorer from Franklin expedition
N	2000	Latitudes of Melt	Joan Clark	Northern Canada; one character becomes a deep sea ice diver
S	2000	Requiem Antarctica	Jane Yolen and Robert Harris	short story, Asimov's science fiction magazine (May). Scott was a vampire...
S	2001	The Grotto Berg	Charles Neider	novella about nature photographer in Antarctica
S	2001	The White	Adrian Caesar	AUS; novel about Scott and Mawson.
N	2001	The Ice Child	Elizabeth McGregor	London journalist looks for archaeologist who has disappeared while researching the Franklin expedition
S	2001	Eliot's Rock	Terry Shumaker	geologist goes on Byrd's 2nd expedition and later gets involved in the Manhattan Project
S	2001	May Be Some Time	Brenda Clough	future time traveling doctors rescue Titus Oates' body from Antarctica; short story in Analog; Apr 2001. Expanded to (600 pp, self-pub?) ebook `Revise the World', 2008
S	2002	Tiptoe, on a Fence Post	Brenda Clough	sequel to above; Analog Jul 2002
N	2002	The Seal Wife	Kathryn Harrison	young scientist isolated at weather observatory in early 20c Alaska has affair with native Alaskan
S	2002	Polar	T. R. Pearson	in a small Virginia town, a shiftless character calls himself Titus & mutters about Antarctica
N	2002	The Navigator of New York	Wayne Johnston	historical novel about a young Newfie explorer, & the Cook & Peary race to the North Pole
S	2002	Antarctica	Claire Keegan	short story in collection of same name; women has affair and ends up tied to the bed while Antarctic documentaries relentlessly play on TV
N	2003	One Day the Ice Will Reveal All its Dead	Claire Dudman	about Alfred Wegener
N	2003	The Rope Eater	Ben Jones	young man joins arctic sailing expedition in 1860s
S	2003	White	Marie Darrieussecq	French, Eng trans. pub. in 2006, set in Antarctic research base
N	2004	North	Donna Jo Napoli	Young Adult, boy runs away to follow Matthew Henson's trek to the North Pole
S	2004	Colder than Ice	Helen Macpherson	Australian archaeologist & American psychologist find remains of the first Antarctic exploration team.
N	2005	Smilers Bones	Peter Lerangis	YA; Fictional account of Minik (Greenand child brought to NY by Robert Peary
S	2006	The Brief History of the Dead	Kevin Brockmeier	Coca-cola employee Laura Byrd - in Antarctica to bottle the melting ice- may be the last survivor of a deadly virus on Earth
S	2006	Degrees of Separation	Laurence Fearnley	NZ; composer, young woman, and skua scientist reflect on their time in Antarctica; (New Zealand writer from Artists to Antarctica program)
N	2006	The Terror	Dan Simmons	historical gothic about Sir John Franklin
N	2006	Afterlands	Steven Heighton	historical novel about Polaris survivors
S	2006	The White Darkness	Geraldine McCaughrean	YA. In Antarctica with her crazy 'Uncle Victor', who wants to deposit her into Symmes hole, a 14 yr old girl imagines conversations with Titus Oates (oops - an awkward choice, given the recent claim that Oates impregnated an 11 year old girl before going to Antarctica).
S	2006	Voyage Along the Horizon: A Novel	Javier Marias	trans. from Spanish; a 1900 voyage to Antarctica with scientists, writers, & artists. Supposedly a parody of 19th C novels. They never get anywhere NEAR Antarctica.
S	2006	Moj of the Antarctic	Mojisola Adebayo	stage play performed in England; African American slave woman escapes from slavery by passing as male, joins a whaling ship & gets to Antarctica. Pub. in 'Hidden Gems', ed. by D. Osborne, 2008.
N	2007	The Solitude of Thomas Cave	Georgina Harding	17th century English whaler winters alone in Greenland
N	2007	The Yiddish Policeman's Union	Michael Chabon	murder mystery/alternate history where 2 million refugee Jews of Europe become the "frozen Chosen", temporarily, in Sitka Alaska
S	2008	Into White Silence	Anthony Eaton	Young Adult. In 1922, an exploration vessel is trapped in the Antarctic icepack. Author had Australian Antarctic Arts fellowship
S	2008	The White Road and Other Stories	Tania Hershman	in the White Road, a woman runs a cafe in Antarctica
S	2008	A Buyers Guide to Maps of Antarctica	Catherynne Valente	short story and 2009 World Fantasy Award Nominee; online here
S	2009	Pescador's Wake	Katherine Johnson	loosely based on sea chase of Aus. vs Uruguayan ship in Antarctic waters over illegal fishing
S	2009	Death on the Ice	Robert Ryan	Fictionalized account of Scott's expedition to South Pole
S	2009	The Ice Lovers	Jean McNeil	In a near future world of lethal flu viruses, a journalist & the great-grandson of a Shackleton expeditionist search for a young female biologist who disappeared in the Antarctic peninsula. Author had a BAS/Arts Fellowship to Antarctica
S	2009	The Nature of Ice	Robin Mundy	AUS, alternates story of modern photographer in Antarctica with that of Hurley on Mawson's expedition; author has worked and wintered over in Antarctica.
S	2010	Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antarctica	Lucy Jane Bledsoe	3 quirky women (a composer, a geologist, and an Antarctic 'regular') spend a summer season in Antarctica. Author has had several NSF Antarctic Artists and Writers awards
N	2010	On the Proper Use of Stars	Dominique Fortier	French Canadian (trans.); about John Franklin's second in command Francis Crozier, his wife Lady Jane Franklin, and her niece Sophia.
N	2010	The Still Point: A Novel	Amy Sackville	split story of a fictional 19th c lost Arctic explorer & his great-great niece a century later
S	2010	The Journey of Anders Sparrman	Per Wastberg	Swedish, fictional account of Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman, who sailed with Capt Cook on his 2nd voyage to Antarctica
S	2011	The Lightkeepers Wife	Karen Viggers	AUS, author has worked in Antarctica
S	2011	Pym	Mat Johnson	American literature Professor leads group of African-American sailors in search of Edgar Allen Poe's Antarctic monsters. Satirizes academia, tenure, Whiteness, Blackness, Poe, junk food, capitalist greed, obsessions, & bad art. Author radio interview with M. Eric Dyson here
S	2012	Dead Men	Richard Pierce

POLAR FICTION

Selected Literary and/or Historical Fiction