Representations of Antarctica

Short Stories

Baby seal

The following bibliography lists short prose works, written in English or translated into English, dealing substantially with Antarctica.

[    A to E |    F to L |   M to Q |    R to Z ]

A to E

Bauer, E. "The Forgotten World." Amazing Stories Aug. 1931: 436–44.

Bledsoe, Lucy Jane. "The Breath of Seals." Best Lesbian Love Stories 2004. Ed. Angela Brown. Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 2004.
[First published in Blithe House Quarterly 6.2 (Spring 2002).]

Bryusov, Valery. "The Republic of the Southern Cross." 1905. The Republic of the Southern Cross and Other Stories. London: Constable, 1918.
[Also published in The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica. Ed. Bill Manhire. Wellington: Victoria UP, 2004. 65-86.]

Burks, Arthur J. "The Fatal Quadrant." Astounding Stories 20.6 (Feb. 1938): 36–64.

Clarke, Arthur C. "At the Mountains of Murkiness, or, From Lovecraft to Leacock." 1940. At the Mountains of Murkiness and Other Parodies. Ed. George W. Locke. London: Ferret Fantasy, 1973. 94–111.

Clough, Brenda W. "May Be Some Time." Analog Science Fiction and Fact Apr. 2001: 10–41.

---. "Tiptoe, on a Fence Post." Analog Science Fiction and Fact July-Aug. 2002: 196–227.
[This is a continuation of Clough's short story "May Be Some Time", cited above. Both stories were incorporated into the novel Revise the World.]

Cormick, Craig. "Lady Shackleton's Freezer." Unwritten Histories. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies, 1998. 159–67.
[Also published in Canberra Times 28 Feb. 1998, Panorama section: 13.]

---. "The Land of Ice: An Extract." Island 105 (2006): 68–73.

---. "The Last Days of Robert Falcon Scott." Futures Trading. Port Adelaide: Ginninderra Press, 2009.

---. "And Still the Blizzard." Southerly 68.2 (2008): 90–97.
[Imagines the final days of Scott's polar party through the eyes of Scott. Plays on the contested nature of history, particularly through Scott's diary and the cultural lens of the Heroic Age.]

---. "Shackleton's Drift." The Princess of Cups. Canberra: Mockingbird, 2003. 81–88.

Drummond, Hamilton. "A Secret of the South Pole." The Windsor Magazine 15 (Dec. 1901 to May 1902): 612–20.

Dyer, Thoraiya. Breaking the Ice. Cosmos 37 (2011).
[Page numbers unknown. Also available online at Cosmos.]

Ellis, S.W. "Creatures of the Light." Astounding Feb. 1930: 197–220.

Emerson, Willis George. "The Smoky God, or, Voyage to the Inner World." 1907–1908. FRAM: The Journal of Polar Studies 1.2 (1984): 546–85.

F to L

Falk, Lee. "Mission to Antarctica." The Phantom 1164 (1997): 1–36.
[In this comic, the Ghost Who Walks goes South!]

Fearnley, Laurence. "Melting Ice." Island 105 (2006): 58–62.

---. "The Piper and the Penguin." Sport 20 (1998): 71–80.
[Also published in The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica. Ed. Bill Manhire. Wellington: Victoria UP, 2004. 246-258.]

Ferguson, Malcolm. "The Polar Vortex." Weird Tales Sept. 1946: 74–81.

Graves, Robert. "Old Papa Johnson." Collected Short Stories. London: Penguin, 1968.

Griffith, George [Pseudonym of George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones]. "From Pole to Pole." The Windsor Magazine 20 (June–Nov. 1904): 531–44.

Hall, Bernadette. "Sul: An Extract." Island 105 (2006): 63–67.

Hershman, Tania. "The White Road." Wonderwall. Route 16. Ed. Anthony Cropper and Ian Daley. Pontefract, West Yorkshire: Route, 2005. 29–37.

Heym, Georg. "The Travellers to the South Pole [Die Sudpolfahrer]." 1911. Trans. Gordon Collier. The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica. Ed. Bill Manhire. Wellington: Victoria UP, 2004. 87–89.
[Originally published in Georg Heym, Dichtungen und Schriften, vol.2: Prosa und Dramen. Ed. Karl Ludwig Schneider. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962. 123–32.  Heym wrote another Antarctic short story, "Das Tagebuch Shakletons" (sic), in which Shackleton and his companions discover a warm polar interior, are turned into zombie-like creatures, and imprisoned.]

Hood, Robert. "Cross Currents." Cosmos 5 (2005): 74–77.

Huntley, Stanley. "A Trip to the South Pole." 1899. At the Mountains of Murkiness and Other Parodies. Ed. George W. Locke. London: Ferret Fantasy, 1973. 71–93.

Keegan, Claire. "Antarctica." Antarctica. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1999. 1–18.

Kent, Sharon. "The Extraordinary Resilience of Moss." Loose Lips: UTS Writers' Anthology. Ed. Lauren Finger et al. Broadway, NSW: Halstead, 2004. 127–38.

Le Guin, Ursula K. "Sur." New Yorker 1 Feb. 1982: 38–46.

Leahy, John Martin. "In Amundsen's Tent." 1928. The Macabre Reader. Ed. D.A Wollheim. New York: Ace, 1959. 48–70.

---. "The Living Death". Science and Invention (Oct. 1924–June 1925). Pages not known.

M to Q

Mackay, A.F. "An Interview with an Emperor." Aurora Australis: The British Antarctic Expedition 1907–1909. Ed. E.H. Shackleton. Cape Royds, private publication, 1908. n. pag.

McMullen, S. "The Deciad." The Call to the Edge. Adelaide: Aphelion, 1992. 110–33.

Malaprop, S [Pseudonym]. "Our Cat." Bulletin 25 Dec. 1919: 20.

Mansell, C. "Walking to Antarctica." Outrider 90: Year of Australian Literature. Ed. Manfred Jurgensen. Brisbane: Phoenix, 1990. 220–25.

Marshall, Owen. "The Frozen Continents." The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica. Ed. Bill Manhire. Wellington: Victoria UP, 2004. 239–45.
[Also published in Marshall, Owen. The Lynx Hunter and Other Stories. Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1987.]

Mawson, Douglas. "Bathybia." Aurora Australis: The British Antarctic Expedition 1907–1909. Ed. E.H. Shackleton. Cape Royds, private publication, 1908. n. pag.

Moore, Sharon. "The Trees of Antarctica." Island 101 (Winter 2005): 32–38.

Nathanson, I. R. "The Antarctic Transformation." Amazing Stories Nov. 1931: 720–29.

Norton, Andre. "The People of the Crater." Fantasy Book 1 (1947): 4–18.
[Republished by Wildside Press (Rockville, Maryland) in 2009.]

Poe, Edgar Allen. "MS. Found in a Bottle." 1833. Edgar Allen Poe: Selected Tales. Ed. Julian Symons. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. 8–17.

Prospero, Peter. "The Atlantis." American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts 1 (1838): 42-65, 222-55, 321-41, 419-37; 2 (1839): 37–41, 231–40.
[First four chapters reprinted in A Man Called Poe. 1970. Ed. Sam Moskowitz. London: Sphere, 1972. 195-211. See editor'sintroduction to "The Atlantis" [pp 192-5] for a discussion of Edgar Allen Poe's possible authorship of this piece.]

R to Z

Richmond, Colin. "The True Story of Captain Oates." The Penket Papers and Other Stories. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986. 87–94.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. "Michel in Antarctica." The Martians. New York: Bantam, 1999. 1–34.

Schenk, Emmy Lou. "Ice Cave." Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine Aug. 1987: 50–68.

Stimson, A.C. "The Land of Mighty Insects." Wonder Stories Apr. 1934: 935–67; 1043–?

Stuart, Don A. "Who Goes There?" Astounding Science Fiction Aug. 1938: 60–97.
["Don A. Stuart" is the pseudonym of John W. Campbell Jr. This story may also be found in the compilation They Came FromOuter Space. Ed. Jim Wynorski. New York: Doubleday, 1980. This story is the basis of the SF classic, The Thin(1951), directed by Christian Nyby. John Carpenter directed the 1982 remake of the same name. The 1951 "Thing" runs amok at a missile base in the Arctic, not  the Antarctic.]

Tinniswood, Peter. "Polar Games." Collected Tales From a Long Room. London: Hutchinson, 1982. 93–104.

Utley, Steven and Harold Waldrop. "Black as the Pit, From Pole to Pole." 1977. The Year's Finest Fantasy. Ed. Terry Carr. New York: Berkeley, 1978. 71–112.

Valente, Catherynne M. A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica. Clarkesworld Magazine 20 (2008). n.pag.
[Available online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/valente_05_08/.]

Van Dresser, Peter. "South Polar Beryllium, Limited." Amazing Stories 5.5 (Aug. 1930): 416–27, 468-–?

Verill, A. Hyatt. "Beyond the Pole." Amazing Stories 1.7 (Oct. 1926): 580–95; 1.8 (Nov. 1926): 724–35.

Walsh, J.M. "When the Earth Tilted." Wonder Stories 3.12 (May 1932): 1343–51.

Watson, Kathleen. "The Small Brown Room." Later Litanies. Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1913. 11–53.

Weir, Mordred [Amelia Reynolds Long]. "Bride of the Antarctic." Strange Stories 3 (June 1939): 72–76.

White, Tony. Shackleton's Man Goes South. London: Science Museum, 2013. eBook.

Whitebeach, Terry. "Antarctic Journey." Living Room: Poems from the Centre. Ed. Jan Owen. Alice Springs: Ptilotus, 2003. Pages not known.
[This is a section of a radio play, also entitled "Antarctic Journey," produced for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 2001.]

Williamson, Jack. "The Lake of Light." Astounding Stories Apr. 1931: 100–17.

Wilson, T.H. "Lost at the South Pole, or, The Kingdom of Ice". Pluck and Luck 63 (Aug. 16, 1899). Pages not known.

Yolen, Jane and Harris, Robert J. "Requiem Antarctica." Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (May 2000): 44–61.