Simmons is chiefly known as a sci-fi author, but he has also written some deeply researched historical horror books. For example, I did not mention it in my Dickens entry, but he wrote a book narrated by Wilkie Collins called Drood. (Of course I read it.) Historical horror seems like it would be fairly niche, but he has obviously sold well and the miniseries adaptation of The Terror was successful enough to generate a second, if unrelated, season. The Terror’s historical topic is the ill-fated Franklin expedition to find a fabled Northwest Passage in 1845. Their two ships (HMS Erebus and Terror) get frozen into pack ice in the waters off Nunavut, Canada, but do not thaw out as they expected the next summer. Traces of their crews (some graves, abandoned boats and tools, sightings by Inuit, a few cairns with notes) lead away from the ships and disappeared into the Canadian wilderness three years later. At least twenty-five had died by the time they abandoned the ships in 1848 and tried to make it the 250 miles to the mainland. No survivors are known. Madness among the crews is suspected. Cannibalism likely occurred. Both ships were finally found in 2014 (Erebus) and 2016 (Terror). The novel covers the expedition, working in hypotheses about why it failed (poorly sealed lead food cans among other things), as well as a supernatural beast. Simmons writes this kind of horror quite well; suspense and dread are constant companions. An Inuit woman is in the novel, and the beast is described as pulled from their mythology; I worry a bit about how that cultural might be handled but am wholly unqualified to decide. The miniseries shortens things, of course, but is a well-done adaptation. If you don’t want to read the quite long book, it is a good representation. I should also mention that Jules Verne wrote a book likely inspired by the Franklin Expedition- 1866’s The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, which is very Jules-Verne-y.
Patrick M. Hare 