The Ice Schooner (1966)

SF Impulse, November 1966, Keith Roberts

The Ice Schooner was initially published as a 3-part serial in SF Impulse (#9-11, Nov 1966 – Jan 1967) and then published in book form in 1969 (although later revised as new editions appeared). Moorcock had already written and published “Behold the Man” and installments of the “cyberpunk” first Jerry Cornelius novel (The Final Programme), but for years had been unable to find someone willing to publish the Cornelius book. Writing The Ice Schooner was both a stylistic exercise and a reaffirmation that he could write and sell a “conventional” novel.

IN BRIEF: On a post-apocalyptic frozen Earth, people survive by sailing the ice fields on ski-railed ships hunting land-based whales for food. Humanity worships the Ice Mother, who they believe is responsible for maintaining their landscape of ice, as well as the game they hunt on the open fields. Rumors of a warming Earth are disturbing to these people, as a land-based landscape would be completely alien to them, and completely destroy their way of life. A fatalistic ex-Captain named Konrad Arflane is convinced by a rich family patriarch to seek out the mythical land of New York and determine if rumors of a warming Earth are true. After a long and brutal journey where Arflane and his crew fight the unpredictable elements, northern barbarians and deal with a ship-board domestic conflict, they reach New York where the inhabitants claim that Arflane’s entire belief system is false.

A Maritime Adventure of the Future

Sphere 1974, Patrick Woodroffe

Seemingly aimed at more of an adult audience (although The Wrecks of Time did have some mature moments), The Ice Schooner reads more like something out of the late 19th century or the early 20th, as if Moorcock were channeling a course between a science-rich Jules Verne fable (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) and a salty Melville sea epic (Moby Dick). Moorcock generally puts “world-building” in his books subservient to allegorical aims or colorful action/imagery, but in this book his writing style indulges in more passages describing the social structure and culture (trade, religion) of his peoples. Much of the book also gains verisimilitude from the unusually-abundant presence of maritime terminology (at least as applied to sailing ships elevated on ski rails navigating across frozen seas).

Overall, although this novel doesn’t have the same kind of “gods and monsters” element applied so effectively in the sword and sorcery sequences, it is really enjoyable as a more existential survival-adventure tale, and the slightly-manic Konrad Arflane becomes a more multi-faceted figure than generally encountered by this point (1966) in Moorcock’s literary corpus. Elric and Erekosë have much to be cynical about, but their fantasy adventures are so filled with over-the-top spectacle (and genocide) that a sense of unreality blunts the sometimes harsh fates of individual characters. Because Arflane and his companions are so human (and thus vulnerable), the growing body count hits on a more visceral level.

Morality Action Narratives

Berkley Medallion 1969,
Sanford Kossin

Written in the total space of a week, Moorcock looked to Joseph Conrad’s novel The Rescue (1898/1920) to serve as a guide to solve certain technical (writing) issues, much as he had used Disraeli’s Coningsby and Burroughs’ Barsoom tales as structural models for The Fireclown/The Winds of Limbo and the Michael Kane books.

“...What I particularly wanted to learn was how to embody moral principles in characters who were human beings, not merely functional representations of good and evil; and not only to embody them, but also to demonstrate those principles in action, which is what Conrad is good at. From Conrad you really can learn how to bring together the moral point, the crucial symbol, the plot development, and the revelation of character, all at the same moment when the natives are attacking the stockade, or whatever…In The Ice Schooner I learned a lot about keeping the moral theme and the narrative working together, but I never thought I really got the proportions right. I was more interested in Arflane and Ulrica than in where they were going, the symbolic aspect of the book.”
  -  Death Is No Obstacle, 1992

A Grim, Driven Character

Sphere 1969

Coming after the appearance of admirable science heroes such as the indefatigable Professor Faustaff, the romantic, swashbuckling Michael Kane, and the future-tense special agent Jerry Cornelius, Konrad Arflane is much more of a tight-lipped, post-apocalyptic “Man With No Name” (Sergio Leone western) figure. Despite some whimsical acts of mercy in the story’s beginning, Arflane is not naturally generous, and later has no qualms about stealing a rival’s attractive wife or brow-beating his crew in order to gain his objectives. At the same time his character clings to a faith-based belief system, and events which test these beliefs end up being far more disturbing to Arflane than those of a physical nature.

“The Ice Schooner was where I began to describe ambiguities of character rather than society, and to allow each side of an argument to have its appeal. I’d done it in The Final Programme, but in a very sensational, jazzy way. Going back to conventional methods with The Ice Schooner, I learned a certain amount of subtlety. The possible readings of The Ice Schooner are subtler than they are in the Elric stories that preceded them, only three years before…”
  -  Death Is No Obstacle, 1992

In fact, although Arflane is later cited as an Eternal Champion in later novels, that kind of fantasy element is completely absent from this book. Also, instead of the relatively playful tradecraft of The Wrecks of Time or The Final Programme (let alone the swashbuckling cliffhangers of Warrior of Mars), The Ice Schooner takes on a much grimmer tone then those books do and ends on a bleaker note closer to the one found in "Behold the Man". Other characters before and after like Elric, Erekosë, Corum, etc have (and will have) dark fates, but Arflane’s course seems more pitiful and brutal, possibly because his circumstances are drawn from more reality-based scenarios. His adventure is really not that different from the travails of those who futilely searched for the Arctic Northwest Passage in the 19th century (beautifully portrayed, by the way, in Season 1 of the AMC TV series “The Terror”).

Detailed Synopsis

Wikiverse Entry

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