The Best Journey in the World (2026)

By Kim Stanley Robinson

Interweaving memoir, some never-before-published photographs, and good old fashioned ice adventure, Kim Stanley Robinson takes readers along on the Arctic journeys that have happened before and the journeys that may never happen again. In May of 1911, Robert Scott and the twenty-four men under his command said good-bye 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 traveled 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 re-read it again in 1995, as part of his preparations to Antarctica that he made that year as research for his Mars…

Published

2026