Ice and the ecothriller

Richard Kerridge’s short article ‘Ecothrillers: environmental cliffhangers’, published in 2000, remains one of very few critical efforts to directly address the subgenre as a whole. This chapter examines the relationship between setting, plot and character in a group of thrillers –– many of them ecothrillers – that take place in a specific natural environment: the Antarctic icescape. Consumed by millions of readers, thrillers offer a revealing insight into how popular culture is imagining human relationships with Antarctica and its ice. The chapter aims to provide insight not only into popular perceptions of Antarctica in the early twenty-first century but also into the questions of scale that are integral to the literature of the Anthropocene. Popular fiction has dominated imaginative written responses to the Antarctic region, forming a barometer of knowledge and perception of the far south, while also reflecting developments in the mass-market novel.