The big freeze: Ice and Iron (1974) by Wilson Tucker

Confronting a time mystery as a new ice age looms

At some point in the 21st century, global temperatures begin to plummet. A new period of rapid glaciation begins, and ice sheets advance ominously from the poles. While societies confront the likely arrival of a new ice age, a small group of investigators at an isolated, frozen base puzzle over a different mystery. Objects and mangled corpses are falling from the sky, seemingly from thousands of years in the past.

Originally published in 1974 and out of print since 1984, Ice and Iron is one of the more obscure novels by the American writer Wilson Tucker (1914 - 2006). Revisiting some themes from his earlier books like The City in the Sea (1951) and The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970), this novel is in part an interesting 1970s example of climate fiction. Specifically, it is inspired by theories of global cooling, a significant minority view at that time but now discredited.

Understandably little-known compared to Tucker's more prominent novels, Ice and Iron is still an intriguing science fictional mystery.

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The zombie awakens: about Wilson Tucker

Wilson Tucker was a science fiction fan, writer, and critic. He was brought up in Illinois and became active in science fiction fan circles in 1929. He edited the fanzine Le Zombie which ran intermittently (published “every time a zombie awakens”) from 1938 to 2001. In his obituary for Tucker, John Clute wrote that Le Zombie was “perhaps the most brilliant” of fanzines. It was in these pages that Tucker coined the term “space opera”.

Tucker worked as a film projectionist from 1931 to 1971, when he retired. Much of his fan, critic, and writing activity was done alongside this career. He was not prolific as a writer of fiction, producing relatively few short stories - some of them fan-related - and 13 SF novels between 1951 and 1981. Of these, the best known are the post-apocalyptic The Long Loud Silence (1952) and the time travel story The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970). Ice and Iron is a fairly obscure novel, but not as obscure as his scarce final work Resurrection Days (1981), which has been out of print since its first publication.

Out of the past?

Ice and Iron has a somewhat unusual structure. It has two narrative threads, one with every chapter named “Ice”, and the other with all chapters named “Iron”. These threads are braided together complexly, as Tucker crafts a science fictional mystery about the past and future of humankind.

The “Ice” thread is set at some point in the 21st century. The United States and Canada have merged into one state, the United States of North America. In practice, what was once Canada is a desolate wasteland, overrun by a new ice sheet which pushes south at a rate of 61 metres per year. Somewhere near Regina, in southern Saskatchewan, Fisher Yann Highsmith is based at a government research outpost. He is a “reconstructionist”, tasked with making sense of various objects and 16 corpses which have fallen from the sky in the area.

These arrivals appear primitive, so Highsmith assumes that they have somehow arrived from thousands of years in the past. When a living man arrives in the same way, Highsmith may have a way to solve the mystery - but time is short, as a fearsome storm is closing in and the entire base may have to be abandoned.

The “Iron” thread is not a single narrative, but rather a set of sometimes intersecting stories focusing on different characters, all primitive people who will end up in Highsmith’s era. Each character has encounters, often violent, with a group of women armed with futuristic technology who are apparently invading the region. These clashes are closely linked with the seemingly inexplicable arrivals in Highsmith’s time.

Mercury falling

Today’s climate fiction deals with the implications of rising temperatures. In the 1970s, some scientists believed that global cooling was on its way. Ice and Iron works with this scenario. In the novel, Canada was essentially destroyed by encroaching ice before Highsmith was even born, and the situation in Siberia is said to be even more dire. Anna Kavan’s novel Ice (1967) employed a similar premise before the 1970s vogue for global cooling, but used it to surreal effect. By contrast, Tucker’s depiction of glaciation is quite meticulously researched.

The strange objects and bodies arriving in Highsmith’s time are interestingly and explicitly described as Fortean phenomena. In the same way that many SF novels are efforts to resolve the Fermi paradox, Ice and Iron is a fictional explanation for classic events researched by Charles Fort, like various documented cases of “rain of animals”. 

Battle of the sexes

The “Iron” component of the novel has a very different atmosphere compared with Highsmith’s deliberations. The violent, nameless characters - the “primitives” - in these episodes are products of an illiterate culture, locked into a constant struggle for survival. The contrast with the frozen but sophisticated world of the 21st century researchers is stark. Tucker makes it clear that what these people lack in technology is made up for by their great attunement to the natural world, their survival skills, and their physical prowess. 

The “Iron” chapters depict a brutal conflict between the overwhelmingly male “primitives” and an exclusively female fighting force which appears to have traveled back in time from even further into the future than Highsmith’s era. In this way, Ice and Iron fits into a 1970s vogue for “battle of the sexes” stories, and also fits in with Tucker’s longstanding interest in matriarchal societies, which would continue in that almost lost final novel, Resurrection Days. 

A somewhat later novel which also contrasts the modern and early human societies and attitudes is Pat Murphy’s excellent The Shadow Hunter (1982). 

Deep time

Ice and Iron should not be viewed as a great, lost science fiction classic of the 1970s - but it is an interesting novel. Through his gradually unraveling mystery, Tucker puts across some intriguing points about human progress, what constitutes civilisation, and dramatic environmental change.