once believed myself to be the sort of person who, if offered the chance to go to Mars, would sign on for the journey in an instant. I now know better. Because having just this morning returned from Antarctica, one of the most beautiful—and most remote—places on my own planet, I find myself with a more realistic view of the extent of my own abilities. I've learned that my willingness to pay with the coin of risk-taking for what I can earn in the experiences of awe-inspiring vistas isn't quite as great as I'd always thought.
Antarctica has always fascinated me, and from the moment, decades ago, that I learned that there was such a thing as Antarctic tourism, that the continent no longer had to be solely the province of scientists and explorers, I was sure that I would someday go there. I've always been attracted to the sense of estrangement, to those places that take you away from the life you know in order to bring you back with a sharper vision of the world you'd left behind.
Antarctica more than fulfilled that promise. It seemed one of the most alien environments on the planet, a place where humans did not truly belong. We've always been an intruder race there, adrift in a place where one misstep could mean death. Of course, I was traveling in the comparative luxury of a cruise ship, and so death did not feel literally so close at hand. But still, as we crossed south from the tip of South America though the furious currents of the Drake Passage, my sense of adventure was excited, and my thoughts did eventually tend to my own mortality, and how far away rescue was should anything befall us.
The thoughts of my own fragility and isolation in no way meant that the visit did not exceed all of my expectations. It was well worth taking, even with the risks. I sat with tens of thousands of breeding pairs of penguins of varied species, watched leopard seals on the hunt, walked across ice floes, stared a humpback whale in the eye as one danced by the prow of the ship, and passed between great icebergs so close I felt I could reach out and touch them. I was filled with the same sense of wonder that I always expected I would feel when walking on the surface of Mars.
White continent, white knuckles
As I sat on the Antarctic continent and watched penguins at their daily routines—adults stealing stones from each other to fortify their nests, chicks chasing parents to beg for regurgitated fish, abandoned chicks forming their creches in hopes of survival—I thought, ah, now I understand why people choose to return to Antarctica year after year. The peace that came over me as I spent hours watching the penguins at play had me feeling that I had entered Heaven and the Garden of Eden rolled into one.
But our crossing of a far rougher Drake Passage as we returned north after our many landings showed me that there are things you learn about yourself while crossing the Drake that you don't necessarily want to learn. The sea voyages that bracket the trip to a walk through a land of limitless white taught me that my own abilities were not so limitless as I'd thought. And in addition to that, being hit by a gastrointestinal virus that laid me and a third of the other passengers low left me with plenty of time for my thoughts to wander.
As I lay on my back in my bed in the dark, with first the virus hitting my stomach and then the Drake hitting my head, I strangely found myself thinking of Mars. On the way south I had thought of the great explorers of the past such as Shackleton and Scott, who thrust themselves into the unknown in fragile ships. But on the way north, I found myself thinking of the great explorers still to come, the ones who will reach out to other worlds, who will have to venture even farther from home and from any possible rescue. And as I lay there, I had to come to terms with the fact that I would now never willingly be one of them. (Not that I was ever in any danger of anyone actually offering to take me along on such a trip, you understand. But still, it was always something nice to fantasize about.)
With my teeth chattering from the apparent chill of a high fever, and with a doctor on board but with serious medical treatment far away, I found myself thinking—what if some truly life-threatening ailment were to occur? What if I'd had a heart attack, or some serious injury that could have been solved in a big city, but that might mean death as we cruised thousands of miles away from help on the bottom of the world? I was only risking such isolation for days, but the explorers to come would be risking it for months and years during a great crossing that would make the Drake and even the one to the moon seem minuscule. And so I realized, perhaps a little late in the game, that no matter what I'd been telling myself, the interplanetary explorer's life was not for me. My risk-taking will remain forever Earth-bound and relatively tame.
So if that offer came today, my answer would be the opposite of what it would have been just a few short weeks ago. Now I must be truthful and say, I would never strap myself atop a rocket and shoot myself across the darkness—the White Continent has taught me that the Red Planet, regardless of its potential beauties, is a destination best left for others.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science Fiction Weekly decades ago, when he began working as an assistant editor at Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His most recent short story appears in the new anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic.
