The Ice People (Barjavel novel)

When a French expedition in Antarctica reveals the ruins of a 900,000-year-old civilization, scientists from all over the world flock to the site to help explore and understand.

The entire planet watches via global satellite television, mesmerized, as the explorers uncover a chamber in which a man and a woman have been in suspended animation since, as the French title suggests, "the night of time".

The woman, Eléa, is awakened, and through a translating machine she tells the story of her world, herself and her man Païkan, and how war destroyed her civilization.

The novel ends with Dr Simon going back to France, heartbroken, ignoring the cries of war and the world youth's demonstrations.

The English edition bears a dedication to Andre Cayatte, with whom Barjavel had worked on film, and who he credits as both the begetter of and the inspiration for the story.

There are several similarities between the stories: a couple that is found in suspended animation with both, female and male, being survivors of ancient lost civilizations that possessed great technological advancements superior to the current stage of our world[2] Both novels fit within the literary genre of Lost World stories.

[3] Cox's story also deals with the discovery of a sphere preserving the knowledge of a vanished, prehistoric civilization with advanced technology, one man and one woman being preserved in suspended animation; the woman alone is awakened, but dies at the end of the story; the knowledge of the ancient civilization is lost.