Icing Burns

According to current climate change prediction models, the Antarctic ice sheet will drive drastic sea level rise by the year 2100, and this melt rate will push Emperor and Adélie penguin colonies to quasi-extinction.

Before the research team of U.S. Baker-Serac, an inland glaciology outpost, deployed for the research season, there were rumours that the United States could be divesting Antarctic funding, in effect making this the final season on the continent.

But it’s now the end of the season and the radio lines are static. They should’ve been on the redeployment ship home days ago.

As the researchers keep trying to get through to the logistics center, they continue their work. They talk about the world back home—the one they’re anxious to get back to and afraid they no longer fit inside. They dance to Dusty Springfield songs together. They pretend that their worlds have not suddenly been hung in suspension. And then comes a knock at the door.

Icing Burns is a fast-paced and cerebral study of extinctions, what it means to give up your life in pursuit of science, and how to hold onto identity in the face of a world that no longer seems familiar.