Hi! I'm L. Shelby, author of the story "Frozen Witness" which is a part of the POLARIS anthology of science fiction stories that came out as a part of the International Polar Year celebration. I've been asked to demonstrate how science fiction allowed me to explore polar science. To me that feels a little backward, I usually think of this story as an example of how polar science allowed me to explore science fiction. It doesn't usually surprise people to learn that I do science research before writing science fiction stories. But it often surprises people to know that I do just as much research when I'm writing fantasy. I...

Imagine a giant meat locker. Now imagine three of them in a row. That's where several kilometers of ice from the deep drilling projects at Vostok and Dome C of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica are stored outside of Grenoble, France. For my thesis work, I'm using these ice core records to reconstruct past climate conditions going back to 800,000 years ago. Unfortunately, by the time I started my thesis, these deep drilling projects were completed or nearly, so I didn't get a chance to make it out onto the ice. That's where the meat lockers come in. Several times a year I get to suit up and make my way past pallets of meat and cheese (this is France...

Claire Eamer, one of the authors in POLARIS: A Celebration of Polar Science, describes where she got her inspiration: When I was asked to think about a story on polar science for an IPY anthology, the first thing that came to mind was climate change. There’s a reason for that. Several reasons, actually. The first reason was that I’d just spent more than three years helping coordinate a network of researchers looking into climate change, so I already knew quite a bit about the science. And I live in the Yukon, the far northwest of Canada, where the level of warming is among the highest in the world. The main reason, though, i...

A science fiction compilation inspired by the polar regions will be released in the next few months. It is called POLARIS: A Celebration of Polar Science, is part of a series called Tales from the Wonder Zone, and is edited by by Julie E. Czerneda and illustrated by Jean-Pierre Normand. We will be publishing blogs here by the different authors, asking what inspired them and what their story is about. This project, described below, is part of the IPY International Youth Steering Committee (project 168). - Nine original science fiction stories based on the science and technology used to understand and explore polar regions...

Welcome to the first Early Career Polar Scientist blog post. We will be posting stories from our group weekly during the IPY. The International Early Career Polar Scientist Network has just been created as a way for young polar researchers to network on an international and interdisciplinary basis beginning early in their careers. Currently we have members from over 11 different countries and are growing rapidly with both Antarctic and Arctic researchers. It has been said that there are two types of people driven to go to Antarctica; the ones that go once for the adventure and the others that once they go, get ice in their veins and keep coming back. This blog entry is not really about science, but about the Ice in my veins and how it got there. ...