Lately, most of my adventures have involved learning not to wear pants to Trustee dinners, developing the ability to talk to people I don't know, and figuring out how to keep caterers from using Grandma's good dishes.  This is not a life that is well suited to writing, so my recent publications have been short stories rather than novels.  This may change soon.  A while ago, I was approached by a group of scientists preparing a grant proposal for an oceanographic expedition to Antarctica.  They wanted a children's writer to come along with them and write a book about the expedition.  They asked if I would agree to take on that task.

 

The conditions, they warned, might be challenging.  The expedition would make two voyages to the Weddell Sea to study icebergs that were once part of Antarctica's enormous ice shelves, which have begun to break apart in recent years.  Each voyage would last a month, and the month would be spent entirely at sea aboard an icebreaker.  The first voyage would take place in the winter.  It would be very cold, and very dark.

 

But the research they described sounded exciting and important.  It had to do with global warming.  Little is known about these icebergs.  Work done several years ago showed that large and small icebergs alike are surrounded by "halos" of abundant marine life that extend out several kilometers in all directions.  It is clear that the icebergs are adding nutrients to the water around them.  Thousands of questions remain unanswered.  How dense are the icebergs?  Where are they going and how fast?  How quickly are they melting?  How much fresh water are they adding to the sea?  How many different kinds of nutrients are they adding to the water, and in what quantities?  How did nutrients get into the icebergs, and where did the nutrients come from?  Are the nutrients the cause of the halos of marine life?  What types of life forms inhabit the iceberg halos, and what are the populations?  What life forms live under the icebergs, where no one has been able to look before?

 

Perhaps the most urgent question is this: are these remnants of the ice shelves helping to reduce carbon dioxide levels, and if so, how much.  According to Ken Smith, an oceanographer and the expedition's principal investigator, "We already know the new icebergs affect the water in complicated ways.  We suspect they're drawing down atmospheric carbon dioxide and sequestering particulate carbon deep in the sea.  We want to know for certain, because the answers will add to our understanding of global climate change."

 

 Raised in the desert wastelands of Nevada, I have always been drawn to empty, otherworldly spaces.  Antarctica is such a place, and I have long wanted to go there -- to see what I could see, to learn what I could learn, to feel insignificant, and therefore free, in a large universe. Did I want to be part of this adventure?  Of course, I said YES.

 

As I thought about what I would give back in return for this opportunity, I realized that I could share my excitement and the things I would learn not only through the book I would write later, but also in the moment, while the adventure was still underway.  As writers know, immediacy makes everything more compelling.  So the idea for two interactive blogs from the ice was born.

 

One blog is specifically for children aged 8-12.  As a child, I was interested in science, but found it hard to stick with the nonfiction books I found in libraries, which, even if they were supposedly for children, were generally about grown-ups doing grown-up things for grown-up reasons.  So, in an effort to make the daily events and science of our voyage more accessible to youngsters, I have cooked up "Unarctica," which tells the story of the expedition from the point of view of the three middle-school protagonists of my novel The Power of Un.  The blog weaves each day's factual and scientific events into an adventure story.  Yes, it's a pure experiment and will involve a lot of writing by the seat of the pants.  But I'm game.

 

The other blog, "Rime of the Modern Mariner: a Horror Writers Winter Journey to Darkest Antarctica," is for teens and anyone else who is interested.  I have observed that most young people love nothing better than a scary story.  So "Rime" mingles each day's events and science activities with my thoughts as a horror writer and amateur naturalist. 

 

I'm encouraging readers to participate by contributing comments and questions using the blogs' "Comments" feature -- another aspect of the thing that will make the writing challenges interesting and unpredictable.

 

I am posting to these blogs occasionally during the run-up to the voyage and afterwards, and daily during the voyage, which begins on May 31, 2008 and ends on June 30, 2008.  Assuming, of course, that I am not huddled in my dark cabin, unkempt, unwashed, and convinced that the water just on the other side of the hull is filled with seagoing zombies, while I reach desperately for my last gumi worm...