Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher – 4th Estate
Published – Out Now
Price – £9.99 paperback £2.99 Kindle eBook
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide; the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
This month we will be exploring Area X by which I mean the now four novels in the Southern Reach Series. An appropriate treat for the month
If horror is often about how a normal world gets chaotically disrupted by something strange and often terrifying – ghost, monster or serial killer then weird fiction if often that reality is not what you think it is. If the laws of space, time and science are malleable then anything can happen which a concept both delightful and unsettling. In Jeff VanderMeer’s powerfully strange Annihilation we follow a group of four women exploring an area where no one who comes back is ever the same…or sometimes they never come back at all and it creates a fascinating trip into a very different part of our world.
Area X is a top secret government label to a closed off large piece of land near a military base. Something has happened there. Perhaps pollution, perhaps an experiment gone wrong or something else. All that is known is that it is strange, dangerous and so far, that eleven expeditions have ventured into it. The twelfth is composed of four women. One the biologist saw her husband return but he was not the same and died soon after. Within four days the group realise that again Area X is not what people think it is.
To perhaps test if this will work for you consider this concept the book introduces. A tower not a tunnel running into the ground. Something that should be impossible is somehow real.
That’s the key to this book which I was absorbed by. Its an incredibly tight narrative told by one character of how the expedition ventured and fell quickly apart once Area X noticed them. VanderMeer works hard in the story to suggest everything is a little off – we have characters known by their professions not their names hence the biologist, the psychologist etc. That should create a distance and yet we get in particular to know the biologist as a character in her own right. Fungi can create letters that make sense and yet don’t in sentences but hint they do. Animals can look to attack then don’t. Area X is both beautiful and desolate. We feel the biologist’s admiration for the place as this is something entirely new and should not be doing this. The first half of the book is very much that feel and the growing sense that this place wins all the time. The group get fractured and soon death strikes in gruesome fashion…without us seeing it happen. It’s a skilful piece of writing that if you enjoy that disturbing feeling of your mind being stretched like rubber will keep you reading.
There is always a balance in such a piece of fiction can we explain it. The latter half of the book starts to hit that Area X is something new and worrying. The biologist starts to get hints at the place’s actual history and how the mysterious Southern Reach agency may not have been telling the truth to any of the 11 expeditions to date. The group have not all been told what is going on. Revelations are shared but at the same time the key mystery – what the hell is going on is not fully explained we just have the biologist’s own conclusions based on her own experiences. On its own this story lets you feel this may be the truth and that is an unsettling concept in itself.
What I think though makes the whole thing work is the biologist’s narration and her sharing of bother her life and observations. The biologist is appropriately clinical and distanced. A classic introvert in many ways who prefers science and nature to people yet had her husband was in many ways the opposite. All was not well I her life and relationships – that distance she has had most of her life seems a barrier. For her while Area X is indeed worrying it is also beguiling – the ultimate biological mystery to explore. This makes her a great observer, but we also start to worry if she is getting to close to her own subject while things go wrong around her. We hover between admiration and distrust at her findings which also helps the reader’s tension as to what will happen next.
Annihilation is very much a reading experience - a fascinating mix of science fiction, weird horror and conspiracy theory and for me the tale’s length here is long enough to explore and experience the mystery and still dangle some explanations without ruining the effect by giving too many pat answers. Every major scene offers the reader a challenge of experiences that shouldn’t be real happening to the world and characters in it. I loved that feeling of going deep into the strange and feeling it come alive on the page. I am very interested in where the next trip to Area X takes us! Strongly recommended!
Coming soon - Book II - Authority
