Yesterday’s tomorrows and tomorrow’s yesterdays: utopian literary visions of Antarctic futures

Abstract

This article surveys utopian visions of Antarctica’s future offered by literary texts in English. The “metaphorics of opposition” associated with Antarctica’s South Polar location has made it a popular site for literary utopias for centuries. Since the time-displaced utopia (or euchronia) began to flourish in the late nineteenth century, numerous literary speculations on the future of the continent have appeared. The article points out emergent patterns and repeated motifs within this subgenre. In early temporal utopias, Antarctica provides welcome space for imperial expansion and resource exploitation. In the dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction that burgeoned after the Second World War, its icescape functions as both a possible threat and a place of refuge. The continent can be a source of hope in recent near-future fiction, although usually in an ambiguous manner. Literary visions of a future Antarctica inevitably extrapolate problems and opportunities evident in their authors’ own times. They provide estranged, denaturalized and hence potentially clearer perspectives on current issues: the present looks different seen as tomorrow’s yesterday.

Keywords:

• Future
• Antarctica
• Literature
• Utopia
• dystopia

Notes

¹ Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 4.

² See Fausett, Writing the New World.

³ Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 10.

⁴ Koselleck, Conceptual History, 88.

⁵ Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 9.

⁶ Qtd in Bratlinger, Rule of Darkness, 239.

⁷ See Leane, Antarctica in Fiction, ch. 6.

⁸ See Glasberg, ch. 2, for an extended discussion of “Sur” in this context.

⁹ Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, 8.

¹⁰ Sargent, “Utopian Traditions,” 15.

¹¹ Sargent, Utopianism, 5.

¹² Sargent, “Utopian Traditions,” 15.

¹³ Moylan, Demand the Impossible, 10–11.

¹⁴ Jacobs, “The Frozen Landscape,” 190.

¹⁵ This utopia has its own Antarctic connections, as discussed in Le Guin’s essay “Heroes.”

¹⁶ Jameson, “World Reduction in Le Guin,” 221.

¹⁷ See Stallard, “Antipodes to Terra Australis.”

¹⁸ On the Heavens 285b8ff; Meteorologica 362a32ff; I’m grateful to classicist Dirk Couprie for his advice on these points; the translations are his.

¹⁹ Virgil, Georgics, 1.242–3. The translation used here is from Leadbetter, “The Roman South,” 47.

²⁰ Godwin, Arktos, 134.

²¹ Wilson, Spiritual History, 145–6.

²² Fausett, Writing the New World, 7.

²³ For a discussion of nineteenth-century Antarctic spatial utopias, see Leane, “Romancing the Pole.”

²⁴ Qtd in Hobart Town Advertiser May 7, 1841, 2. The play text has been lost but the epilogue is reproduced in this newspaper article.

²⁵ Williams, Australia on the Popular Stage, 192.

²⁶ Epinasse and Williamson, Australis, 17, 69.

²⁷ Fantasia, “J. C. Williamson’s Vision,” 90.

²⁸ Vogel, Anno Domini, 36–7.

²⁹ Bryusov, “Republic,” 66–7.

³⁰ See Manning, “Unreality,” 358–9 for a detailed version of this convincing interpretation of Bryusov’s story.

³¹ Nathanson, “The Antarctic Transformation,” 721.

³² Ibid., 729.

³³ Punning on the “sci-fi” with which it often overlaps, cli-fi is short for “climate fiction.”

³⁴ Writer Tony White has recently published a novel, Shackleton’s Man Goes South (2013), commissioned by the Science Museum in London, which explores the implications of Simpson’s story, drawing on interviews with contemporary climate scientists.

³⁵ Walsh, “When the Earth Tilted,” 1343–4.

³⁶ Manhire, “Introduction,” 20.

³⁷ Ibid., 19–20. Manhire points out that the author is very likely to have been Dorothy Beall Cunningham, making The Wide White Page one of the earliest English-language Antarctic novels written by a woman.

³⁸ Cunningham, Wide White Page, 14; original emphasis.

³⁹ Ibid., 22.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 183.

⁴¹ Mawson, “Commercial Resources,” 216.

⁴² Sutphen, The Doomsman, 16.

⁴³ Batchelor, Birth of the People’s Republic, 391.

⁴⁴ Shute, On the Beach, 114.

⁴⁵ Johnson, Pym, 30.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 58.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 322.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 241.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 225.

⁵⁰ Darrieussecq, White, 30.

⁵¹ Ibid., 60.

⁵² Ibid., 140.

⁵³ Robinson, Red Mars, 298, 445; Green Mars, 697.

⁵⁴ Aldiss, White Mars, 9–10.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 323.

⁵⁶ Robinson’s fictional version of near-future Antarctic tourism reflects historical trends: utopian theorist Ruth Levitas has noted the way that contemporary utopianism “has retreated into the private sphere,” taking the form of diet and exercise programmes which aim at perfection of the body; home or garden makeovers; and holidays. Levitas, “Imaginary Reconstitution,” 54.

⁵⁷ Robinson, Antarctica, 535–9.

⁵⁸ Vint and Bould, “Dead Penguins,” 257, 258, 264.