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Sources: Wikipedia, Pinterest
Facts noted in italics. The rest sprang from the author’s imagination.
Erebus, Antarctica’s best known and the world’s southernmost active volcano, overlooks the McMurdo research station on Ross Island. It has a lava lake in the summit crater that has been active since at least 1972. Its most recent eruption was in 2020.
In conceiving the Erebus Tales series, I wanted the mountain to be a central character in the plot. When I later learned that the name “Erebus” comes from Greek mythology – the primordial God of darkness – it seemed fitting to have the climactic event of the series occur during the continent’s months of total darkness.
Even though part of Antarctica’s ice sheet may have melted by the 24th century, it will take many millions of years, and considerable realignment of tectonic plates, before the continent’s light and dark cycles change once again. See “Gondwana” section of an earlier blog post.
Ores of iridium, one of the least abundant elements in the earth’s crust, are found primarily in asteroid craters and especially in chunks of rock deposited by volcanic eruptions. Some of the mass extinctions, such as the Cretaceous, which killed off the dinosaurs, can be identified by high concentrations of iridium ores in sediment of these craters.
Iridium, derived from the Greek word iris (rainbow), refers to the various colors of its compounds. Iridium oxide is blue-purple, or violet, and that stone is the one sought by Luz Hogarth for the use of her mother. She in turn has found a way to meld the ore into stunning pieces of jewelry, from which sale she makes a living.
The pure form of this precious metal has unique properties, such as extreme density and resistance to heat and corrosion, that make it especially valuable in 24th century commerce, which drives the plot in this series. It normally appears as a yellowish silver color.
Keltyn Sparrowhawk, the geologist wunderkind and main protagonist of Erebus Tales, is an expert in methods of finding iridium ore.Her research, back in Canada, shows that most of the earth’s volcanoes are either underwater due to rising sea levels, or inaccessible due to geopolitical factors. The exception is Erebus. The question is, how to get to Antarctica? With radical climate change, no one from northern latitudes has ventured there for hundreds of years. Keltyn and her Canadian mentor persuade the mogul Oscar Bailey to sponsor an exploratory flight to Mt. Erebus, none of them aware that anyone inhabits the continent.
