First you fall in love with Antarctica, and then it breaks your heart. So it seems to X (short for Extra Large), General Field Assistant on the South Pole Overland Traverse train. And if Antarctica doesn't do it, then Valerie Kenning might. Val: beauty of the continent, hotshot mountaineer; currently employed as tour guide on the 'Worst Journey in the World': and adventure holiday reconstruction of Scott's 1911 expedition, about to live up to its name. In Kim Stanley Robinson's stunning eco-thriller human drama, on a large and small scale, rages across Antarctica in the next century, as ice pirates and corporations, ecoteurs and politicos, adventurers and romantics all fight to impose their own world view on our last great wilderness.