Icescape

Gerry Nolan coordinated 10 of the Antarctic day flights and took part in eight of them himself. On the first flight he remarked to people in the upstairs lounge, including several newspaper editors and senior journalists, that he thought a crash with survivors would make an interesting story. However, it wasn’t until more than two years later, in March 1979, that he started writing ICESCAPE. He finished it in six weeks. Several publishers were interested but Horwitz were quickest off the mark. If they had stuck to their publishing schedule, the book would have been released in September 1979, about 10 weeks before the 28 November crash of Air New Zealand flight TE-901 on Mount Erebus in Antarctica, which killed all 237 passengers and 20 crew.To avoid giving the impression of benefiting from the tragedy, publication was delayed until 1980. Nevertheless, ICESCAPE sold all 8000 copies quickly.On a personal note, Gerry remarks how eerily similar the Air New Zealand crash and the events surrounding it were to the situations depicted in ICESCAPE; in particular, the radio silence and whiteout conditions. On the evening of the crash he was repeatedly telephoned by friends who rang to ensure that he wasn’t on flight TE-901 and also, due to the long period of uncertainty about the fate of the flight, to question him about what might be happening.The rewrite has not changed the story at all in light of the TE 901 crash. In fact it is not even mentioned. Ironically, the eeriness continues. Just after Gerry started this rewrite, Malaysian Airlines flight MH-370 disappeared and, at the time of writing this, it has still not been found. The original story been changed, although Gerry believes he has improved the writing of it considerably.