The Belgian Antarctic Expedition was sold as a scientific mission, but at its core it was a romantic endeavor. De Gerlache conceived the journey because the blank space at the bottom of the map drew him in like a vacuum. Up until then, that void, which the Belgica’s scientists hoped to fill with cold, hard facts, had been filled with fiction. The men’s conceptions of the unknown Antarctic were necessarily formed by literature, just as Jules Verne’s fantasies had been inspired by science.
