Bill Green (2) (1973–)

It's rare for me to read a coffee-table book from start to finish, but I was immediately captivated by the combination of Bill Green's poetic essays (adapted from his book "Water, Ice, Stone") and Craig Potton's photography of Antarctica's Dry Valleys, which constitute most of the 2% of the Antarctic continent which is ice-free. In combination, they give a powerful sense of what being in this remarkable landscape is like.

If, like me, you are a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, then there is an extra reason to read this book. The Dry Valleys feature in "Red Mars" as the training area for the Mars explorers, and seing the photos in this book brings many of the real and imagined landscapes described by Robinson - the chaotic terrain, the ground fractured into polygons, the rocks of Nussbaum Riegel - vividly to life.… (mer)