Making the landscape integral to the plot and mood of a novel is certainly nothing new: Thomas Hardy and Ivan Turgenev were quite adept at it.
But the landscape that comes alive in Denver-area author Dan Simmons’ latest novel, “The Terror,” would likely give both Hardy and Turgenev nightmares for months (as it will any modern-day reader). The Arctic bends, cracks, spits and hurls ice at the 19th-century explorers in this mesmerizing adventure.
Simmons (“Olympos,” “Song of Kali”) takes as his starting point a doomed expedition to “force the Northwest Passage,” which began in May 1845 and finally ended in tragedy in 1848. Outfitted with state-of- the-art engines and packed with rations enough to last years, both the HMS Terror and flagship HMS Erebus were believed to be impervious to the onslaught of nature and the ships were manned with the largest expeditionary group ever assembled. But hubris and inherent flaws of mankind are always a certain formula for failure, and Sir John Franklin’s expedition was no different.
The fate of this British expedition was one of the big mysteries of the day, akin, states some publicity material, to losing 129 crew members and two ships launched on a 21st-century exploratory trip. And though only a few graves were discovered and the ships and most of the crew never found, this is certain where this expedition is concerned: poor judgment on the part of Franklin, the captain; bad weather (ice that normally thaws did not do so); disease (tuberculosis and scurvy); inadequate supplies (china plates but inadequate jackets and boots for overland travel in the Arctic); and improperly prepared rations (leaded soldering on the “tins” of food, etc.) combined to end the expedition in disaster.
That would be story enough for one novel, but it is the uncertainties – the fate of the crew after last being seen at Baffin Bay; the question of cannibalism; stories of crew members spotted years later – which Simmons explores and exploits, using fictional speculation to transform this fine novel from historical fiction to a tale of survival, metaphysical horror and, yes, outright terror.
Simmons jumps straight into the action, picking up the narrative in October 1847 (with occasional flashbacks to the year before), four months after Franklin’s death. Already beset with TB, scurvy and questionable rations, both the Terror and the Erebus are trapped in the ice near King William Island. Any possibility of the crews being able to get the ships free so they can sail to safety is just a wistful dream.
“White” bears occasionally attack the ships and stranded crew in search of easy meals. Ice floes toss the wooden vessels about like toys and sickness is spreading. Many of the crewmen aboard the Terror believe the hold where bodies are stored is haunted, while others believe that something besides the polar bears is stalking the men when they try to move between ships or traverse the bleak whiteness in search of civilizations to the north.
A few others believe that an Eskimo woman with a missing tongue who has stumbled across the stranded explorers might even be some sort of shape-shifting creature playing cat and mouse with them all. Whatever the truth, men are dying in groups of two, three and more, and not always from natural causes.
Told mainly through the eyes of Francis Crozier, a competent and embittered sailor who was passed up for promotion because of ethnicity, and Dr. Harry D.S. Goodsir, “The Terror” is an increasingly horrifying tale of juxtapositions: man’s hubris in the face of nature’s power (explorers equipped with cutting-edge equipment believing they can conquer the harsh Arctic); the harmony of natives who understand its power (the Inuit, who routinely cross miles of ice by foot or dog-towed sleds); the cramped, filled- to-the-brim “worlds” of the two ships; and the harsh, barren, kill-or-be-killed environment of the Arctic.
It’s a relentless narrative of how indifferent and cruel nature can be and how imaginative and clever native peoples are when living in such truly harsh conditions. (The last time Simmons delved into such native ingenuity was in his novella, “Sleeping With Teeth Women.”)
Just to keep things off-balance, Simmons has the men discover that something huge, with paw prints “half again as large” as those of a polar bear, is stalking them whenever they are out on the ice – a much more imaginative explanation for the cuts found in crew members’ bones than the standard cry of cannibalism.
With storms packing “cricket-ball sized” hail, wind and lightning, plus quick ice, which can push up through a flat surface in the blink of an eye, the Arctic makes itself known as a character and “monster” every bit as fearsome and otherworldly as the terrible creature stalking the crew members.
Simmons’ prose is as sharp and dazzling as the ice of which he writes. He cleverly uses the older, British spelling – “Esquimaux” – when writing of the Inuit to help prop up the reality of his story.
In the end, “The Terror” comes off like a collaboration between Charles Dickens and John Campbell, the author of “Who Goes There,” later filmed as “The Thing.” With its mix of the familiar and the unknown, it’s plopping down in a cozy, cushioned-covered 19th-century settee, only to find that the comfy piece of furniture has been placed in an Arctic cave surrounded by bloodthirsty beasts.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
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The Terror
By Dan Simmons
Little, Brown, 784 pages, $25.95
