The Terror is the name of a 2007 novel by American author Dan Simmons. The novel is a fictionalized account of Franklin's lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror under Captain Sir John Franklin to the Arctic to force the Northwest Passage in 1845 - 1848. In the novel, while Franklin and his crew are plagued by starvation and scurvy and forced to contend with mutiny and cannibalism, they are stalked across the bleak Arctic landscape by a supernatural monster.