Ice Tomb [Paperback]

A gripping page-turner for sci-fi buffs. But others just may be converted after reading this debut novel from Ottawa's Deborah Jackson.

From the bone-chilling ice caps of Antarctica to the strange ecosystem on the moon, Jackson takes the reader on a whirlwind ride that includes ancient earth mysteries and futuristic technology tossed in with a sensual interlude and a jaded romance. Jackson's characters move through this novel like a thunder storm on a hot afternoon-fast, powerful and captivating.

"...It wasn't until strange things started happening down here that NASA and the Pentagon became interested in those coordinates."

"Strange as in thermal activity or strange as in people disappearing?"

Erica Daniels heads up a scientific investigation, which leads to some unexpected findings and a surprise finale.

Jackson has researched well for this one; too bad the publishers didn't do the same, placing a polar bear in a purposed Antarctic landscape on the cover! Ah-well! Go with the old adage; "Don't judge a book by its cover." This one's worth opening up!

Fortunately, the science inside the book, while at times highly speculative, seems pretty accurate. As a scientist myself I must admit that the author has captured the scientist mindset, and while a number of themes such as Atlantean super-technology, moon colonization and unscrupulous media-seeking scientists aren't anything new, they are employed in a well-coordinated, entertaining and -- for all the SF and fantasy that has been set in Antarctica -- fairly original manner.

In Ice Tomb a new hotspot develops in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which isn't entirely odd since Antarctica is seismically and volcanically active, but when those who investigate the site disappear, it's time to send in someone who knows what they might be up against. Erica Daniels, a vulcanologist, is summoned by NASA, thinking she has been chosen as head geologist for an expedition seeking to prepare the colonisation of the moon. So when the ex-lover who betrayed her gets the job, she's assigned to the Antarctica hot spot project, and she's saddled with a media-hungry archæologist with a bent for finding Atlantis along with a bunch of gung-ho armed-to-the-teeth marines, she's not a happy camper. What she will find in the barrens of Antarctica will bring her and her ex back together, demonstrate there's something to that old Atlantean super-technology, and, oh yes, determine the fate of the human race in the face a massive impending meteor impact.

Stories of lost races (or their artefacts) in Antarctica go way back, Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751) being perhaps the earliest. Oddly enough, be it the author's avowed reading of much SF and fantasy informing her writing, or merely coincidence, one can find a number of parallels with the incidents in Ice Tomb and a number of older tales. For example, in Gustavus Pope's Journey to Mars (1894), Martians have a landing field in Antarctica, and are at risk when a meteor shower threatens to strip a moon away from their planet. Along those lines is José Moselli's "Le Messager de la Planète" (in L'Almanach Scientifique, 1925), where a pair of Norwegian explorers, one a geologist, discover an alien spacecraft which is melting the ice around it; before their sled dog kills the alien aboard, they are shown instant video linkup to his home planet, and a number of other nifty technologies. And of course, for people disappearing mysteriously in Antarctica, and the paranoia surrounding it, one cannot forget John W. Campbell, Jr's novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) [the basis of the films The Thing From Another World (1951) and more recently The Thing (1982)].

That said, Deborah Jackson does create believable characters, and manages to present the more esoteric technologies without great gobs of exposition. Jackson's handling of the consequences of all that happens is perhaps a bit terse considering the enormity of the events, and certainly one might expect those who live through it to be somewhat more traumatized, but perhaps -- I speculate -- this is all sequel-fodder. As for Ice Tomb I'm not saying the whole thing is entirely believable, even the parts which don't involve super-technologies, but a rapid pace and multi-dimensional characters who actually evolve make Ice Tomb eminently readable and any minor flaws easily ignored.

Georges T Dodds
SF Site
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