Litquake San Francisco Literary Festival
The Best Journey in the World: An Antarctic Story with Kim Stanley Robinson
Co-presented with Grace Cathedral’s The Forum
Interweaving memoir and good old fashioned ice adventure, Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest takes readers along on the journeys that have happened before and those that may never happen again. In May of 1911, Robert Scott and his men said goodbye to the sun and settled in for the long Antarctic winter. When the sun returned in September, they would try to become the first people to reach the South Pole. However, a week past the winter solstice, Scott’s second-in-command decided to take an impromptu sled trip. Chronicled by zoological assistant Apsley Cherry-Garrard, this side trip became The Worst Journey in the World, one of the best adventure books ever written. Robinson first read Cherry-Garrard’s book in his twenties and re-read it again in 1995, as preparation for a research trip to Antarctica for his Mars novels. It was a dream excursion: he traveled around the continent, by snowmobile and helicopter and airplane, and followed in their ill-fated footsteps. Doors at 7:00 PM.