#136 Hell freezes over: Ice (1967) by Anna Kavan

Dramatic climate breakdown is causing extremes of weather never seen before, and contributing to a succession of convulsive wars, with no end in sight. This isn't the 21st century - it's a unique entry in the tradition of the British catastrophe novel.

Ice was written by Anna Kavan and published in 1967. It was the last novel by a uniquely talented, and uniquely troubled author. Similar in some ways to other disaster novels by authors like John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard, Ice differentiates itself with its surreal qualities and troubling resonances with the author's own life - which was marked by tragedy and addiction. 

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Transcript

Ice is a novel which represents an uncomfortable but fascinating intermixing of autobiography and imagination. Sometimes described as science fiction, viewed by others as genre-bending “slipstream”, it is in any case an indelible work - the last one published before its unique author died of heart failure in 1968. 

A short, surreal tale, Ice is likely influenced by Anna Kavan’s difficult upbringing, unsatisfactory relationships, and long-term addiction to heroin. It is also a vividly imagined catastrophe novel, with some resonances with the work of other British authors like John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard. Kavan imagines unstoppable walls of ice which push out from the polar regions, gradually bringing the whole world within their frozen embrace. As the disaster draws near, a series of cruel and aimless wars threaten to wipe out humankind before the cold can finish the job.

Deeply bleak, Ice is also oddly beautiful in its own way. Once little known, Kavan’s final novel has become something of a cult item and with good reason. This is a noteworthy entry in the tradition of the British catastrophe novel, but also something more darkly personal - the last statement in the lifetime of a deeply troubled author.

Difficult beginnings

Anna Kavan’s life was marked by what Zadie Smith called “autobiographical extremity”. Her tragic biography strongly influenced her work, but also has been said to overshadow it. She was born Helen Emily Woods in 1901. Her family was wealthy and they travelled frequently, but Woods’ upbringing was lonely and she was neglected by her parents - her father died when she was in her teens. Her adulthood was no happier. She was married twice - her son from her first marriage was killed in action during World War II and a daughter from a second marriage died in infancy.

As early as the 1920s, Woods was introduced to heroin and became a lifelong addict - she also experimented with various other drugs. Following a suicide attempt in 1938, Woods was admitted to a clinic in Switzerland, the first of several spells in various institutions. In 1939, she renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her early novels, and embarked on a marked change in her writing approach. She had begun on the road to Ice.

The precise nature of the catastrophe

The novel is modestly plotted. It has a nebulous, dreamlike quality in part because it has no named characters, nor specified locations. It follows the first-person perspective of a man, who himself has changeable, chimeric qualities. He has returned to his own country - possibly the UK - ostensibly to investigate a looming disaster. Very quickly, he becomes obsessed with pursuing a particular girl he has encountered before. Though arduous, the search has a constantly surreal quality. Against the odds, the man repeatedly locates the girl, in ways that seem impossible - but she repeatedly flees or escapes him.

The search is complicated by two factors. One is the “Warden”, a mercenary figure who frequently holds the girl within his power in a succession of temporary confinements. The other is the ice. Suggested at one point to have been caused by nuclear detonations at the Earth’s poles, the approaching new ice age is the principal SF element of the novel. However it too has a deeply surreal quality. At times, the ice is portrayed as almost animate, stalking the man wherever he goes. It is linked inextricably to the man, the girl, and the Warden - just as they are locked in an ever-shifting arrangement of antagonism.

As the ice marches on, its arrival causes a succession of brutal wars with which the man’s journey often intersects. Exploiting his apparently limitless resources, he pursues the girl from one unspecified country to another. By turns he is victim of, observer of, and participant in a number of crimes and atrocities that occur under the fog of war. Society is collapsing, but the man is relatively untroubled by this. In this respect, he resembles some of the protagonists of J.G. Ballard, who in novels like The Drowned World (1962), presented characters who were not repulsed by chaos and destruction, but rather drawn to it due to its potential for psychic transformation.

Sub zero

Ice is a highly distinctive, unusual, and experimental novel. At times, it is as cold as its title implies. There is an alienating quality to the lack of specifics about characters, places, and events. The surreal aspects can also be disorienting, as the protagonist’s journeys sometimes veer suddenly into unlikely scenarios which may or may not be dreams or fantasies - the diversions of a fractured mind. 

A pervasive sense of unreality dominates Kavan’s novel, and yet it retains the power to unsettle. The catastrophic encroachment of ice mirrors the extreme weather which is becoming more and more prevalent in our own world; the depiction of senseless, runaway wars is also uncomfortably real. While very far from a conventional science fiction novel, Ice is a challenging and worthy part of the genre, which has been deservedly rescued from obscurity.