{"id":13249,"date":"2014-06-24T12:10:44","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T16:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=13249"},"modified":"2014-06-24T12:15:30","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T16:15:30","slug":"jeff-vandermeer-annihilation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/06\/24\/jeff-vandermeer-annihilation\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Vandermeer: Annihilation<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a month or so ago, I was listening to Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm\u00a0(which you can find here<\/a>),\u00a0and his guest was author Jeff Vandermeer, best known in science fiction and fantasy circles (you can find that particular episode here<\/a>). They were talking about Vandermeer’s new\u00a0Southern Reach Trilogy, the second volume of which had just come out, and I was interested in what I was hearing, some mesh between science fiction and horror. It was also nice to know that all three books in the trilogy are being released this year, starting with\u00a0Annihilation<\/em> (2014), which came out in February, then Authority<\/em>, which came out in May, and finishing up with Acceptance<\/em>, in September. I took\u00a0Annihilation<\/em> on holiday with me, but I wasn’t expecting to read much of it . . . I was on holiday with the children. But the book had me so engaged, so excited, that I stayed up too late into the night to read — it was worth it.<\/p>\n

\"Review
Review copy courtesy of FSG.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Area X is a kind of disaster zone. Around thirty years ago, some “ill-defined” event occurred, and Area X was boxed off. Since that time, there have been eleven expeditions into Area X (I keep wanting to call it the Zone, so, yes, I thought of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker<\/em> a lot). The first came back with reports that everything was pretty good: nature had taken over and was flourishing. But each subsequent expedition was not so fortunate. The second ended with a gun fight. The third with a mass suicide. The eleventh came back, unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, and each member died of cancer within the next year.<\/p>\n

Annihilation<\/em> begins\u00a0in the first days of the twelfth expedition. Composed of four women —\u00a0a psychologist (the leader), a surveyor, an anthropologist, and\u00a0a biologist (our narrator). They’ve recently crossed the border into Area X, have set up at base camp, and, in a quick scan of\u00a0the area, found this (the novel’s opening, disorienting sentence):<\/p>\n

The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How does a tower plunge into the earth? Don’t they shoot out of it? It depends on perspective, I guess. The biologist notes (the book we’re reading is actually her field notes, though it reads as a novel) that the other three members all call it a tunnel (which makes sense), but she cannot help but feel she’s standing at the precipice of something, and it makes her dizzy.<\/p>\n

The expedition is puzzled by the tower’s presence. After eleven expeditions, they felt like they had a good idea of the geography of Area X. There are still some signs of towns that once existed, and they know of a lighthouse (the see it on the horizon and are anxious to explore it). But no one ever reported that there was a tower (or tunnel).<\/p>\n

Annihilation<\/em>\u00a0it’s not just the old towns that haunt the landscape; signs of the\u00a0old expeditions are everywhere, and the group learns quickly that they know nothing about Area X.<\/p>\n

I love — absolutely love — stories like this. I thought of Stalker<\/em>, as I said, but I also thought Tarkovsky’s Solaris<\/em>, Bioy Casares’s\u00a0The Invention of Morel<\/em>, the television show\u00a0Lost<\/em> (with its best mysteries), and the old computer game Myst<\/em>. These lonely treks through haunted physical space that emerge as lonely treks through the human mind.<\/p>\n

I took loads of notes as I was reading this book. But, being the first in a trilogy, most are still unanswered questions, many may be stray ends, so I’m not confident I have a handle on all of the themes and meanings yet.<\/p>\n

I’m definitely okay with that. And as I write this post, I realize that I don’t want to say more than I already have. This is a book to explore on your own, to discover the secrets. I’m already moving on, well into Authority<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trevor reviews the first part of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, Annihilation<\/em> (2014). Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[627],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-13249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jeff-vandermeer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Annihilation.jpg?fit=948%2C1422&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3rH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13249"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13344,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13249\/revisions\/13344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13249"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}