Never afraid to tackle a tough book or topic, the Beamers launched off into the weird wilderness of Area X, the setting for Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, which starts with the novel, Annihilation. Loosely adapted into a movie, Annihilation has won a Nebula Award for science fiction and a Shirley Jackson Award (2014) for psychological thrillers. Would the blend of future and fright work for the Beamers, or would we hack a trail with our literary machetes to escape its mutating embrace?
Through Area X with gun and camera …
Jeff VanderMeer is a writer, critic, and anthologist (along with his wife, Ann) whose works have been well awarded in genre circles. He is also a dedicated conservationist, and his frequent hikes into the St. Marks (Fl.) National Wildlife Refuge were the inspiration for his Southern Reach books. The St. Marks lighthouse makes a significant appearance in Annihilation, which relates the fate of the 12th expedition into a puzzling patch of wilderness called Area X. The expedition team consists of 4 women known only by their job descriptions (“the biologist”, “the psychologist”). What they discover and what happens to them sets up the puzzles that the later books attempt to solve. The Southern Reach books were conceived as a single work, but they were broken into smaller segments and released in rapid succession, over the course of 8 months, in what his publisher called a “Netflix-inspired strategy” to capture reader attention. Since the 2nd and 3rd books hit the NY Times bestseller list, we can surmise that the plan worked.
It’s not nice to fool your readers
But did the readers of the Southern Reach books need to be teased? It was not a successful ploy as far as the Beamers were concerned. A general complaint aimed at Annihilation was the lack of any closure for the mysteries that continue to pile up as the narrative continues. What causes the failure of technology inside Area X? Why does it continue to expand? Where is Area X, anyway? On a future Earth? Or another planet entirely? Where does our narrator ultimately go? What meaning does the writing on the wall contain? So many questions! And even the further volumes are not guaranteed to present answers, as our resident VanderMeer fan, Penn, informed the rest of us. Given that the Beamers are not averse to ambiguity in our reading, feeling that it allows some breathing room for reader autonomy in choosing how a book ends, the sense of being overwhelmed by the mysteries of Annihilation was an uncomfortable surprise for most of us.
Even when specific aspects appealed, they were not always well received. As our narrator, the biologist, begins to transform (due to inhalation of spores?) and delves into the cryptic tunnel decorated by a sanity-threatening shape-shifting creature, I was struck by the parallels to H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, one of the classics of sf/horror that the Beamers tackled. That recognition was not welcomed by others, though, who did not feel like repeating the grimness and pessimism of Lovecraft. Chris, who enjoys first-person narration for its intimacy, was not excited to be stuck with the biologist, especially in the latter part of the tale when she is alone with her thoughts and not in dialogue with other characters. Catherine, a successful subject of hypnosis, was not pleased with the depiction of it in the book (“Annihilation” turns out to be the trigger word for a hypnotic suggestion to commit suicide).
Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!
Most of us wondered how the book was adapted into a movie, given its lack of action or plot development or mystery solving. Those of us who have seen it referred to the movie as “loosely” (that is, not at all) related to the book. Even Area X was not the same, becoming “the Shimmer”. The emotional detachment of the book also does not translate well onto the movie screen. And yet, there are some points of hope that do stick out. I found that the relationship between the biologist and her husband (lost and found and lost-again member of the 11th expedition) constitutes a true love story as she comes to know him better through finding his journal and following in his wake at the end of the book. Our problem was trying to tell which version was the real husband or (maybe) a doppelganger created by Area X. Catherine felt that the transitory nature of Area X, where characters stay for only a short time (unless it is the lighthouse keeper), made it a metaphor for Purgatory, a place of temporary punishment that leads characters to a better place.
And a redeeming feature of the book is Mr. VanderMeer’s powerful and poetic language, combined with a love of the landscape that emerges in its details. Kathy praised his descriptive prose, which (almost) made up for the lack of an engaging story. Roberto was reminded of the original pilot episode for Star Trek, which impressed the Desilu Studio execs with its skill but also made them push for changes to get a series that was not so cerebral. Overall, there was an impression that the writing was clearly the reason that the book won awards. Our awards were a bit more modest, with a plethora of ‘7’s being tossed around, and a couple of ‘8’s that were facing off with some ‘4’s. If we could have cozied up to the biologist and understood her situation better (Was it a dream? Does she dream?), we probably would have been better disposed.
