An adventure, of sorts, this is" we had both said, thinking about RRS Discovery moored here at Dundee ― a gloriously rigged and sea-ready vessel with its high mast and narrow quarters that took Scott and Shackleton to Antarctica, for all the world as though it would take only a high wind and a breath of imagination for it to snap its rigging, and set off down the Tay again towards the wide open seas. "That kind of adventure", we said to the writers, artists, scientists, historians, publishers and poets all gathered with the book, within our own kind of ship, quartered in these lovely pages in The Voyage Out. "Imagine what you might contribute as being your own kind of voyage," we said, ‘just as your work is an experiment and a question and a grand game... Think about going out onto the great white expanse as the Discovery went out there. Into nothingness, into the unknown...’ And one by one, the contributors within stepped on board. The result is a unique compendium that captures all of the essaying adventures and possibilities of voyaging, the "what ifs" of imaginative, creative, scientific and historical enquiry.

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