Trapped Inside? The Snowed-In SFF Reading List

The Snow Queen, by Joan D. Vinge
Due to a bunch of wonky sci-fi reasons involving an orbit around a black hole, the planet Tiamat, the setting of this Hugo Award–winning sci-fi classic, has lovely, 150-year-long summers…and generations-long winters to match. If we shared the same climate and winter ended tomorrow, the last person to remember a sunny day would have been alive during the Civil War (on the other hand, I’m sure we would have invented the internet a lot sooner).

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
Then there are those winters that just never end. The White Witch of Narnia loves ’em so much, she casts a spell to make it winter forever. I like the layered look as much as the next J. Crew shopper, but that’s just uncalled for.

The Shining, by Stephen King
After just a day trapped in the apartment, my whole family is feeling a bit stir-crazy, so I imagine we’d fare little better at the Overlook than Jack Torrance, who goes mad while wintering in the isolated, snowbound hotel and tries to murder his wife and young son. I haven’t quite reached that point, but while Jack may have had to face actual ghosts, he didn’t have to entertain a toddler, so probably the stress all evens out.

At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft
In NYC these days, it’s not the snow that gets to you (though there’s plenty of that), it’s the bitter wind. In Lovecraft’s influential horror novel, it’s not the chilly climes of Antarctica that will get you, it’s the eldritch terrors of the elder gods breaking through the walls of reality. The forecast calls for real feel temps in the high tentacles.

The Terror, by Dan Simmons
Based on the true story of a lost expedition to the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, Simmons’ dense novel deals in such detail with the realities of surviving in the freezing cold that it could probably be sold as an air conditioner. If the horrors of concurrent frostbite and scurvy aren’t enough for you, there’s also the suggestion that something even more terrible is lurking out on the ice.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
LeGuin’s landmark novel is a thought-provoking examination of gender and cultural bias, but what really sticks with me, some two decades after I first read it, is the long trek across a barren sheet of ice that comprises about half the book, during which the two main characters bond and learn about their differing cultures,at least while they’re not huddling together for warmth and trying, with only partial success, to avoid freezing to death.

Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
Leckie’s blockbuster debut is a grand, universe-spanning space opera, but it starts off with a chilly trek through one of the classic SF environs, the ice planet (in fact, the very first scene involves on of the main characters being saved from freezing to death in a snow bank). By the time you get to the tense journey across a perilous frozen bridge, you’ll be piled under a mountain of blankets.

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin
OK, so technically winter is still coming to the isle of Westeros, but things are already plenty miserable by the end of the fifth book in the mega-popular fantasy epic. When it’s already cold enough to build a 700-foot ice wall to keep the magical frost zombies at bay, the fact that supernatural weather patterns can mean actual winter lasting an entire decade is just icing on the cake.
What books chill you to the bone?