The Terror by Dan Simmons

This is going to be a love letter to this novel. I cried five times while reading this book, yes I am an easier crier, but the story is just that good.

It has the elements that I like: it is long historical novel, based on real events, and is considered to be part of the horror/supernatural genre. It is full of evil men and their poor choices, yet it still humanizes the men to the point that you are devastated. This is not a happy ending.

I pick books based for the most part on their cover and title, I am okay with the briefest of synopsis, and I am chasing a random whim. If anyone recommends a title, and I have not read it, I will add it to my list.

I bought the book after I watched the first couple of episodes of the show and read the wikipedia page for the failed Franklin expedition, being snagged by book to show tie in. I decided to buy the book so I could compare it to what I had already watched. If you haven’t noticed already, I am a sucker for a book that is being made into a film or show.

I had already read the Hyperion Cantos series years back, based off a recommendation someone made when I said I wanted to read more sci-fiction. I did not connect the author as being the same until I was already a hundred pages into The Terror, when I decided then to look up his other works.

This is all to say I am not sure if Dan Simmons is problematic, please let me know so I can be informed. I hope the author is not though, because I am a fan and these books will always be something I will recommend. It is amazing to me when a writer can get their message, and complex ones at that, across varied genres. His imagination to build multiple worlds and tie in all the events to the very end, is something that many people struggle with in their singular genre. 

The Terror is the name for a ship that was part of a lost expedition led by Captain Sir John Franklin in 1945 that was meant to explore the Northwest passage. From what they found at several sites (there were still sites being discovered as of 2014 that might indicate what happened to the men) it is an incomplete accounting as to why they men did not survive. 

There are several major timeline points and educated conjectures based off the different contributing factors to their deaths. Over the course of three years, the men faced the same unexpected winter conditions that would trap and make cannibals out of the Donner party. A factoid pointed out in The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party which at his point is the more optimistic story of the two. If you have not read this nonfiction novel add it to your list as well. 

 To tell this story, and scare the shit of you, there are elements of: medical and body horror, cannibalism, stalking and overwhelming prey, and random acts of cruelty. There is no reprieve between the factual details over what they men would face and the monster that is reaping the men in dire conditions. 

I think it is important to read the page first if you wish to read The Terror, since this is a narrative taken from history. What is documented is a series of error after error. 

It brings such life to it, that even though Dan Simmons is imagining what may have happened, he crafted so many distinct voices that it seems just as plausible as what did happen. I love The Crucible for the same reason, Arthur Miller has the same skill at taking history and molding it to his vision as a means to replace the story so that we cannot tell fact from fiction.

In between the action, that in such a clean matter pieces together the story all the way to the end and leaves no detailed unexplained or unexamined, the characters are so full it is almost impossible to believe that this did not happen. 

This is about a group of white explorers, so that colonizer attitude is not ignored. If you want to see a book where men mansplain to other men, only to ensure their deaths in a land that was not theirs to fuck around without proper esteem and resect, this is the comeuppance tale for you. This habit of allowing prejudice and judgement to rule when it comes to their choices, is not just cruel against women, it was something that en masse men will have to turn away from in order to same themselves from themselves. Even back then they were doing it, but to each other! 

I feel the moral is don’t do it, don’t be so obstinate, get your head out of our ass, and be ready to listen or else you are going to die. But also no one really deserves to die of scurvy, starvation, hopeless, and far from home. No one should have to carry the burden of such graceless and cruel deaths. 

Unlike some other recent stories I read (Shifts), there is a range of loves in this story. There is range of competence, malevolence, and deserving of their fate. But in the end, even for the worst of the men, I did not want them to succumb as I knew they would. 

One of the gay relationships described is soul crushing. I cried several times, and even now I can think about them without feeling sad. This is like anytime I have a conversation about the old man in Shawshank Redemption, I work myself up and feel it as much as the first time I sobbed at that scene. Listen, I cried so hard. 

Why do I like survival novels in which no one survives? Why put myself through the anxiety only to come out knowing it wouldn’t matter? I can only say that it is worth it with book to go on that journey even knowing that is will be impossible to survive. 

Read it, read it, read it.