Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation was published over a decade ago. I was aware of it from seeing the book around. The cover is striking and I heard a lot of good things about the novel and its sequels. I also knew VanderMeer is associated with the science fiction genre, which I almost never read anymore. Especially not newer books.
I was also aware that Jeff and his wife Ann edited a massive anthology of science fiction called, appropriately, The Big Book of Science Fiction. Over twelve-hundred pages in length, this book was touted to be the definitive look at the history of the genre. Possessing more than a small amount of knowledge of the field, I checked out the table of contents.
The usual suspects are all present: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Ellison, LeGuin, Sturgeon, etc, but I noticed some conspicuous absences. No Philip Jose Farmer? "The Lovers" did not make the cut? How about Norman Spinrad? Surely "Carcinoma Angels" should be on any list. No Alfred Bester. Can you believe it?
That's not the worst of it. Who is the most important writer of the Golden Age of SF? There isn't a single story from Robert A. Heinlein. What?
I get that Heinlein is controversial. He was a tough nut to figure. Heinlein was kind of a bizarre mix of militarist and unlikely hippie icon.
No history of SF should even be mentioned without including Heinlein. No historical anthology should be without "The Green Hills of Earth", which is poignant and beautiful and one of the greatest pieces of short science fiction the world has ever known.
Ok, maybe there were copyright issues. I'll give the VanderMeers the benefit of the doubt.
I'll get into the glaring omissions in their anthology, The Weird, another time.
Annihilation was Jeff VanderMeer's breakthrough novel. It was the one that cracked the bestseller lists and put him on the cultural map. Having heard Annihilation is sort of a horror novel, I was curious about the book. So I finally took the plunge and entered into a terrifying landscape called Area X.
There's a kind of forbidden zone in an undisclosed location known as Area X. It's been closed off for three decades. The population knows about it, and there are some conspiracy theories, but it's mostly dismissed. Rather like the mysterious drones flying over America a few months ago.
A research team enters Area X. Three unnamed women go in and experience a phantasmagorical nightmare. They may or may not have been hypnotized into accepting the mission. Area X seems to be a sentient being. They cannot trust each other or even their own senses.
The narrator is a biologist who quickly becomes estranged from the others. She is exposed to some potentially harmful spoors, and that's where things get really creepy.
This is a classic unreliable narrator scenario. Is she, and possibly the others, experiencing hallucinations from the harmful bacteria? Has it driven them insane? What is the ominous tunnel or perhaps tower they find? Who wrote the cryptic messages on the walls, which seem to be organic in nature?
Annihilation is a dark, dark book. It's cold and almost unbearably sterile. I wasn't sure I was enjoying it for the first half, but its insidious secrets infected me and kept me reading.
The whole thing reads to me like a parable about the environmental disaster we seem to be rushing toward. It also seems like a metaphor for the way humankind is intent on suicidal extinction by destroying the planet we call home.
The end of Annihilation reveals few of its secrets. It's a dizzying, disorienting, disturbing novel that packs a hell of a punch in its brief page count.
The book I am most reminded of is Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. It's a dreamlike novel about a planet with a sentient ocean that can read the memories of astronauts who visit it. I respected Solaris more than I actually enjoyed it, and I never read another Lem afterward.
I was thinking I'd trudge through Annihilation, and as with Stanislaw Lem, not explore the worlds of Jeff VanderMeer any further. Upon completion I'm now fully under the spell of Area X. At the very least I'll move on to Authority, which is the next title in what is called the Southern Reach series.
Written by Mark Sieber
I was also aware that Jeff and his wife Ann edited a massive anthology of science fiction called, appropriately, The Big Book of Science Fiction. Over twelve-hundred pages in length, this book was touted to be the definitive look at the history of the genre. Possessing more than a small amount of knowledge of the field, I checked out the table of contents.
The usual suspects are all present: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Ellison, LeGuin, Sturgeon, etc, but I noticed some conspicuous absences. No Philip Jose Farmer? "The Lovers" did not make the cut? How about Norman Spinrad? Surely "Carcinoma Angels" should be on any list. No Alfred Bester. Can you believe it?
That's not the worst of it. Who is the most important writer of the Golden Age of SF? There isn't a single story from Robert A. Heinlein. What?
I get that Heinlein is controversial. He was a tough nut to figure. Heinlein was kind of a bizarre mix of militarist and unlikely hippie icon.
No history of SF should even be mentioned without including Heinlein. No historical anthology should be without "The Green Hills of Earth", which is poignant and beautiful and one of the greatest pieces of short science fiction the world has ever known.
Ok, maybe there were copyright issues. I'll give the VanderMeers the benefit of the doubt.
I'll get into the glaring omissions in their anthology, The Weird, another time.
Annihilation was Jeff VanderMeer's breakthrough novel. It was the one that cracked the bestseller lists and put him on the cultural map. Having heard Annihilation is sort of a horror novel, I was curious about the book. So I finally took the plunge and entered into a terrifying landscape called Area X.
There's a kind of forbidden zone in an undisclosed location known as Area X. It's been closed off for three decades. The population knows about it, and there are some conspiracy theories, but it's mostly dismissed. Rather like the mysterious drones flying over America a few months ago.
A research team enters Area X. Three unnamed women go in and experience a phantasmagorical nightmare. They may or may not have been hypnotized into accepting the mission. Area X seems to be a sentient being. They cannot trust each other or even their own senses.
The narrator is a biologist who quickly becomes estranged from the others. She is exposed to some potentially harmful spoors, and that's where things get really creepy.
This is a classic unreliable narrator scenario. Is she, and possibly the others, experiencing hallucinations from the harmful bacteria? Has it driven them insane? What is the ominous tunnel or perhaps tower they find? Who wrote the cryptic messages on the walls, which seem to be organic in nature?
Annihilation is a dark, dark book. It's cold and almost unbearably sterile. I wasn't sure I was enjoying it for the first half, but its insidious secrets infected me and kept me reading.
The whole thing reads to me like a parable about the environmental disaster we seem to be rushing toward. It also seems like a metaphor for the way humankind is intent on suicidal extinction by destroying the planet we call home.
The end of Annihilation reveals few of its secrets. It's a dizzying, disorienting, disturbing novel that packs a hell of a punch in its brief page count.
The book I am most reminded of is Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. It's a dreamlike novel about a planet with a sentient ocean that can read the memories of astronauts who visit it. I respected Solaris more than I actually enjoyed it, and I never read another Lem afterward.
I was thinking I'd trudge through Annihilation, and as with Stanislaw Lem, not explore the worlds of Jeff VanderMeer any further. Upon completion I'm now fully under the spell of Area X. At the very least I'll move on to Authority, which is the next title in what is called the Southern Reach series.
Written by Mark Sieber
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