The Science Museum, London, has published its first work of fiction. The novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, has been written by the museum’s former writer-in-residence Tony White.
Shackleton’s Man Goes South explores the political, social and cultural impacts of climate change. “The story is a desperate journey in a hot world—an escape to Antarctica rather than from it,” White told The Guardian.
White says he was inspired by fragments of a story by one of the members of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated 1911 Antarctic expedition. George Clarke Simpson had written the story for South Polar Times, Scott’s own newspaper that documented his journey to the South Pole. In the story, Simson talks about industrialisation; the melting and freezing in the Antarctic; and how it is destroying the human race. “It was one of the earliest tales to mention climate change,” White said.
One can download a free copy of the novel from the museum’s website.