With stunning original photographs, an Antarctic scientist and explorer takes us to one of the most sublime, remote, and pristine regions on the planet.
 
The interior of Antarctica is an utterly pristine wilderness, a desolate landscape of ice, wind, and rock; a landscape so unfamiliar as to seem of another world. This place has been known to only a handful of early explorers and the few scientists fortunate enough to have worked there. Edmund Stump is one of the lucky few. Having climbed, photographed, and studied more of the continent-spanning Transantarctic Mountains than any other person on Earth, this geologist, writer, and photographer is uniquely suited to share these alien sights.

With stories of Stump’s forty years of journeys and science, Otherworldly Antarctica contains 130 original color photographs, complemented by watercolors and sketches by artist Marlene Hill Donnelly. Over three chapters—on the ice, the rock, and the wind—we meet snowy paths first followed during Antarctica’s Heroic Age, climb the central spire of the Organ Pipe Peaks, peer into the crater of the volcanic Mount Erebus, and traverse Liv Glacier on snowmobile, while avoiding fatal falls into the blue interiors of hidden crevasses. Along the way, we see the beauty of granite, marble, and ice-cored moraines, meltwater ponds, lenticular clouds, icebergs, and glaciers. Many of Stump’s breathtaking images are aerial shots taken from the planes and helicopters that brought him to the interior. More were shot from vantages gained by climbing the mountains he studied. Some were taken from the summits of peaks. Many are of places no one had set foot before—or has since. All seem both permanent and precarious, connecting this otherworld to our fragile own.

"“Explorer and geologist Stump went on his first research mission to Antarctica in 1970 and returned many times over the following decades. The new book Otherworldly Antarctica offers a selection of the photographs he took on these trips, capturing the ‘innumerable forms’ that ice can take. Icebergs that could have been carved by the sculptor Henry Moore glide through still waters; a meltwater pond refreezes, releasing a shimmer of dissolved gases; a crevasse seems to include every shade of blue. . . . Now in his seventies, he writes that if he ‘had one hour more to savor Antarctica,’ he’d be standing in a field of wind-carved snow ‘as far as the eye could see.’”" - Wall Street Journal

"In captivating words, photographs, and illustrations, geologist Stump’s book Otherworldly Antarctica covers the 'stark and utterly pristine' continent where winter never leaves. . . . Stump is meditative, even spiritual, in his descriptions of his favorite place. . . . His memorable photographs of crevasses contain stunning hues from the palest powder blue to midnight black; icebergs and glacier tongues form exquisite sculptures as they blend into the sea. And there’s a thrilling peek along the rim of Mt. Erebus, the world’s southernmost active volcano. . . . Otherworldly Antarctica is a fascinating armchair travel book, approaching the remotest place on Earth with a knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and artistic guide. It will be a standout in collections about polar exploration or landscape photography." - Foreword Reviews (starred review)

"Because I can't resist a book on Antarctica, here is an illustrated account of the author's forty years living and working in this pristine and forbidding landscape, with photographs and complementary sketches and paintings. Stump is a geologist, with more experience of the Transantarctic Mountains than anyone else on Earth." - The Bookseller