Publisher Description

The New York Times bestselling final installment of Jeff VanderMeer's wildy popular Southern Reach Trilogy It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it--the Southern Reach--has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril. Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X--what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X--and who may have been corrupted by it? In this New York Times bestselling final installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound--or terrifying.

Author Biography

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Dead Astronauts, Borne, and The Southern Reach Trilogy, the first volume of which, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland starring Natalie Portman. VanderMeer speaks and writes frequently about issues relating to climate change. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, and their cats, plants, and bird feeders

Review

"A satisfying conclusion to this captivating trilogy" --Booklist "This trilogy is that rare thing--a set in which the whole is as great as the parts." --Publishers Weekly "I'm loving The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Creepy and fascinating." --Stephen King on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Chilling." --Julie Bosman, New York Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy "VanderMeer masterfully conjures up an atmosphere of both metaphysical dread and visceral tension . . . Annihilation is a novel in which facts are undermined and doubt instilled at almost every turn. It's about science as a way of not only thinking but feeling, rather than science as a means of becoming certain about the world. . . . Ingenious." --Laura Miller, Salon on The Southern Reach Trilogy "A clear triumph for Vandermeer . . . a compelling, elegant, and existential story . . . .The solitary voice of its post-humanist narrator is both deeply flawed and deeply trustworthy--a difficult and excellent balance in a novel whose world is built seamlessly and whose symbols are rich and dark." --Lydia Millet, LA Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy "A book about an intelligent, deadly fungus makes for an enthralling read--trust us." --Tara Wanda Merrigan, GQ on The Southern Reach Trilogy "[A] strange, clever, off-putting, maddening, claustrophobic, occasionally beautiful, occasionally disturbing and altogether fantastic book . . . Annihilation is a book meant for gulping--for going in head-first and not coming up for air until you hit the back cover." --Jason Sheehan, NPR Books on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Successfully creepy, an old-style gothic horror novel set in a not-too-distant future. The best bits turn your mind inside out." --Sara Sklaroff, The Washington Post on The Southern Reach Trilogy "If J.J. Abrams-style by-the-numbers stories of shadowy organizations and science magic have let you down one too many times, then Annihilation will be more like a revelation. VanderMeer peels back the skin of the everyday, and gives you a glimpse of a world where science really is stretching the bounds of our knowledge--sometimes to the point where we can't ever be the same . . . [Annihilation] will make you believe in the power of science mysteries again." --Annalee Nevitz, io9 on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Fans of the Lost TV series . . . this one is for you." --Molly Driscoll, Christian Science Monitor on The Southern Reach Trilogy "What frightens you? According to many psychologists, our most widely shared phobia is the fear of falling. Jeff VanderMeer's novel Annihilation taps into that bottomless terror . . . VanderMeer ups the book's eeriness quotient with the smoothest of skill, the subtlest of grace. His prose makes the horrific beautiful." --Nisi Shawl, Seattle Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Much of the flora and fauna seem familiar, but that's what's so fascinating about the carnage that VanderMeer sets loose. He has created a science fiction story about a world much like our own." --John Domini, Miami Herald on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Annihilation feels akin to isolated sci-fi terrors of Alien . . . teases and terrifies and fascinates." --Kevin Nguyen, Grantland on The Southern Reach Trilogy "The plot moves quickly and has all the fantastic elements you'd ever want--biological contaminants, peculiar creatures, mysterious deaths--but it's the novel's unbearable dread that lingers with me days after I've finished it." --Justin Alvarez, The Paris Review on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Jeff VanderMeer ventures on to strange ground in this enigmatic story." --Alex Good, The Toronto Star on The Southern Reach Trilogy "[VanderMeer's] writing is courageously imaginative, fiercely unformulaic, and utterly immersive. You don't read Jeff VanderMeer, you experience him." --Paul Goat Allen, The Barnes & Noble Book Blog on The Southern Reach Trilogy "The first book in what may be a modern classic of post-apocalyptic sci-fi . . . .Annihilation's story struck me hard and pulled me in fast. I haven't had a reading experience this creepy, intense, and edge-of-your-seat since H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness." --Paul Schwartz, UR Chicago on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Annihilation is smart, tense and utterly engrossing." --Mike Reynolds, Bookgasm on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Master of the literary headtrip Jeff VanderMeeer's Annihilation is simply unlike anything you've read before. It gnaws away at your nerves with a slow-building sense of dread and impending madness." --Marc Savlov, Kirkus Reviews on The Southern Reach Trilogy "VanderMeer both defies and challenges genre boundaries, forcing readers to forget about traditional tropes and clichés and simply enjoy the storytelling." --John DeNardo, Kirkus "Best Bets for Speculative Fiction Books, February 2014 on The Southern Reach Trilogy "A gripping fantasy thriller, Annihilation is thoroughly suspenseful." --Heather Paulson, Booklist on The Southern Reach Trilogy "After their high-risk expedition disintegrates, it's every scientist for herself in this wonderfully creepy blend of horror and science fiction. . . . Speculative fiction at its most transfixing." --Kirkus (Starred Review) on The Southern Reach Trilogy "A gripping fantasy thriller, Annihilation is thoroughly suspenseful. In a manner similar to H. G. Wells' in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), VanderMeer weaves together an otherworldly tale of the supernatural and the half-human. Delightfully, this page-turner is the first in a trilogy." --Heather Paulson, ALA Booklist (Starred Review) on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Brilliant . . . ever-more-terrifying, yet ever-more-transcendent . . . .Using evocative descriptions of the biologist's outer and inner worlds, masterful psychological insight, and intellectual observations both profound and disturbing--calling Lovecraft to mind and Borges--VanderMeer unfolds a tale as satisfying as it is richly imagined." --Publishers Weekly on The Southern Reach Trilogy "In much of Jeff VanderMeer's work, a kind of radiance lies beating beneath the surface of the words. Here in Annihilation, it shines through with warm blazing incandescence. This is one of a grand writer's finest and most dazzling books." --Peter Straub, author of Lost Boy, Lost Girl on The Southern Reach Trilogy "One of those books where it all comes together--the story and the prose and the ideas, all braided into a triple helix that gives rise to something vibrant and alive. Something that grows, word-by-word, into powerful, tangled vines that creep into your mind and take hold of it. Annihilation is brilliant and atmospheric, a novel that has the force of myth." --Charles Yu, author of How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe on The Southern Reach Trilogy "A dazzling book . . . haunted and haunting." --Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners on The Southern Reach Trilogy "A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unraveling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and a claustrophobic dread that linger long afterward. I loved it." --Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls on The Southern Reach Trilogy "The great thing about Annihilation is the strange, elusive, and paranoid world that it creates. . . .I can't wait for the next one." --Brian Evenson, author of Last Days on The Southern Reach Trilogy "It's been a long time since a book filled me with this kind of palpable, wondrous disquiet, a feeling that started on the first page and that I'm not sure I've yet shaken." --Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods on The Southern Reach Trilogy "This swift surreal suspense novel reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world. The reader will want to stay trapped with the Biologist to find the answers to Area X's mysteries." --Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars trilogy "Unsettling and un-put-downable like an old-fashioned adventure story, only weirder, beautifully written and not at all old-fashioned." --Karen Joy Fowler, BookPage on The Southern Reach Trilogy "The prose is phenomenal . . . it toyed with my imagination in ways that haven't happened since A Wrinkle in Time." --Madison Vain, Entertainment Weekly on The Southern Reach Trilogy "Its deepest terror lies in its exploration of . . . the human heart, and the terror that can grow from the ways in which we are untrue to each other, and to ourselves." --Jared Bland, The Globe and Mail on The Southern Reach Trilogy "VanderMeer's masterful command of the plot, his cast of characters, and the increasingly desperate situation will leave the reader desperate for the final volume in the trilogy." --Publishers Weekly on The Southern Reach Trilogy "What frightens you? According to many psychologists, our most widely shared phobia is the fear of falling. Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation taps into that bottomless terror . . . VanderMeer ups the book's eeriness quotient with the smoothest of skill, the subtlest of grace. His prose makes the horrific beautiful." --Nisi Shawl, The Seattle Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy "There's something Poe-like in this tightening, increasingly paranoid focus . . . the payoff is absolutely worth the patience." --N.K. Jemisin, The New York Times on The Southern Reach Trilogy

Review Quote

What frightens you? According to many psychologists, our most widely shared phobia is the fear of falling. Jeff VanderMeer's novel Annihilation taps into that bottomless terror . . . VanderMeer ups the book's eeriness quotient with the smoothest of skill, the subtlest of grace. His prose makes the horrific beautiful.

Description for Reading Group Guide

In Jeff VanderMeer's haunting Southern Reach trilogy, an American wilderness has become a shadowland, concealed by the government for more than thirty years. An environmental disaster zone, Area X is home to strange biological forces that have begun gathering strength. The secret agency known as the Southern Reach has sent in eleven expeditions to discover the truth about Area X, but each team succumbed to violence or illness. Our story begins as a twelfth group is attempting to succeed where all others have failed. Comprised of four women, the team includes a psychologist (the de facto leader), a surveyor, an anthropologist, and a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. But those who venture across the border bring their own secret histories, creating a world where trust is a fool's game. This guide is designed to enrich your discussion. We hope that the following questions will enhance your journey into Area X.

Excerpt from Book

0001: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER Overhauled the lens machinery and cleaned the lens. Fixed the water pipe in the garden. Small repair to the gate. Organized the tools and shovels etc. in the shed. S&SB visit. Need to requisition paint for daymark-black eroded on seaward side. Also need nails and to check the western siren again. Sighted: pelicans, moorhens, some kind of warbler, blackbirds beyond number, sanderlings, a royal tern, an osprey, flickers, cormorants, bluebirds, pigmy rattlesnake (at the fence-remember), rabbit or two, white-tailed deer, and near dawn, on the trail, many an armadillo. That winter morning, the wind was cold against the collar of Saul Evans's coat as he trudged down the trail toward the lighthouse. There had been a storm the night before, and down and to his left, the ocean lay gray and roiling against the dull blue of the sky, seen through the rustle and sway of the sea oats. Driftwood and bottles and faded white buoys and a dead hammerhead shark had washed up in the aftermath, tangled among snarls of seaweed, but no real damage either here or in the village. At his feet lay bramble and the thick gray of thistles that would bloom purple in the spring and summer. To his right, the ponds were dark with the muttering complaints of grebes and buffleheads. Blackbirds plunged the thin branches of trees down, exploded upward in panic at his passage, settled back into garrulous communities. The brisk, fresh salt smell to the air had an edge of flame: a burning smell from some nearby house or still-smoldering bonfire. Saul had lived in the lighthouse for four years before he'd met Charlie, and he lived there still, but last night he'd stayed in the village a half mile away, in Charlie's cottage. A new thing this, not agreed to with words, but with Charlie pulling him back to bed when he'd been about to put on his clothes and leave. A welcome thing that put an awkward half smile on Saul's face. Charlie'd barely stirred as Saul had gotten up, dressed, made eggs for breakfast. He'd served Charlie a generous portion with a slice of orange, kept hot under a bowl, and left a little note beside the toaster, bread at the ready. As he'd left, he'd turned to look at the man sprawled on his back half in and half out of the sheets. Even into his late thirties, Charlie had the lean, muscular torso, strong shoulders, and stout legs of a man who had spent much of his adult life on boats, hauling in nets, and the flat belly of someone who didn't spend too many nights out drinking. A quiet click of the door, then whistling into the wind like an idiot as soon as he'd taken a few steps-thanking the God who'd made him, in the end, so lucky, even if in such a delayed and unexpected way. Some things came to you late, but late was better than never. Soon the lighthouse rose solid and tall above him. It served as a daymark so boats could navigate the shallows, but also was lit at night half the week, corresponding to the schedules of commercial traffic farther out to sea. He knew every step of its stairs, every room inside its stone-and-brick walls, every crack and bit of spackle. The spectacular four-ton lens, or beacon, at the top had its own unique signature, and he had hundreds of ways to adjust its light. A first-order lens, over a century old. As a preacher he thought he had known a kind of peace, a kind of calling, but only after his self-exile, giving all of that up, had Saul truly found what he was looking for. It had taken more than a year for him to understand why: Preaching had been projecting out , imposing himself on the world, with the world then projecting onto him. But tending to the lighthouse-that was a way of looking inward and it felt less arrogant. Here, he knew nothing but the practical, learned from his predecessor: how to maintain the lens, the precise workings of the ventilator and the lens-access panel, how to maintain the grounds, how to fix all the things that broke-scores of daily tasks. He welcomed each part of the routine, relished how it gave him no time to think about the past, and didn't mind sometimes working long hours-especially now, in the afterglow of Charlie's embrace. But that afterglow faded when he saw what awaited him in the gravel parking lot, inside the crisp white fence that surrounded the lighthouse and the grounds. A familiar beat-up station wagon stood there, and beside it the usual two Séance & Science Brigade recruits. They'd snuck up on him again, crept in to ruin his good mood, and even piled their equipment beside the car already-no doubt in a hurry to start. He waved to them from afar in a halfhearted way. They were always present now, taking measurements and photographs, dictating statements into their bulky tape recorders, making their amateur movies. Intent on finding … what? He knew the history of the coast here, the way that distance and silence magnified the mundane. How into those spaces and the fog and the empty line of the beach thoughts could turn to the uncanny and begin to create a story out of nothing. Saul took his time because he found them tiresome and increasingly predictable. They traveled in pairs, so they could have their séance and their science both, and he sometimes wondered about their conversations-how full of contradictions they must be, like the arguments going on inside his head toward the end of his ministry. Lately the same two had come by: a man and a woman, both in their twenties, although sometimes they seemed more like teenagers, a boy and girl who'd run away from home dragging a store-bought chemistry set and a Ouija board behind them. Henry and Suzanne. Although Saul had assumed the woman was the superstitious one, it turned out she was the scientist-of what?-and the man was the investigator of the uncanny. Henry spoke with a slight accent, one Saul couldn't place, that put an emphatic stamp of authority on everything he said. He was plump, as clean-shaven as Saul was bearded, with shadows under his pale blue eyes, black hair in a modified bowl cut with bangs that obscured a pale, unusually long forehead. Henry didn't seem to care about worldly things, like the winter weather, because he always wore some variation on a delicate blue button-down silk shirt with dress slacks. The shiny black boots with zippers down the side weren't for trails but for city streets. Suzanne seemed more like what people today called a hippie but would've called a communist or bohemian when Saul was growing up. She had blond hair and wore a white embroidered peasant blouse and a brown suede skirt down below the knee, to meet the calf-high tan boots that completed her uniform. A few like her had wandered into his ministry from time to time-lost, living in their own heads, waiting for something to ignite them. The frailty of her form made her somehow more Henry's twin, not less. The two had never given him their last names, although one or the other had said something that sounded like "Serum-list" once, which made no sense. Saul didn't really want to know them better, if he was honest, had taken to calling them "the Light Brigade" behind their backs, as in "lightweights." When he finally stood in front of them, Saul greeted them with a nod and a gruff hello, and they acted, as they often did, like he was a clerk in the village grocery store and the lighthouse a business that offered some service to the public. Without the twins' permit from the parks service, he would have shut the door in their faces. "Saul, you don't look very happy even though it is a beautiful day," Henry said. "Saul, it's a beautiful day," Suzanne added. He managed a nod and a sour smile, which set them both off into paroxysms of laughter. He ignored that. But they continued to talk as Saul unlocked the door. They always wanted to talk, even though he'd have preferred that they just got on with their business. This time it was about something called "necromantic doubling," which had to do with building a room of mirrors and darkness as far as he could tell. It was a strange term and he ignored their explanations, saw no way in which it had any relationship to the beacon or his life at the lighthouse. People weren't ignorant here, but they were superstitious, and given that the sea could claim lives, who could blame them. What was the harm of a good-luck charm worn on a necklace, or saying a few words in prayer to keep a loved one safe? Interlopers trying to make sense of things, trying to "analyze and survey" as Suzanne had put it, turned people off because it trivialized the tragedies to come. But like those annoying rats of the sky, the seagulls, you got used to the Light Brigade after a while. On dreary days he had almost learned not to begrudge the company. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye but not notice the log in your own eye? "Henry thinks the beacon could operate much like such a room," Suzanne said, as if this was some major and astounding discovery. Her enthusiasm struck him as serious and authentic and yet also frivolous and amateurish. Sometimes they reminded him of the traveling preachers who set up tents at the edges of small towns and had the fervor of their convictions but not much else. Sometimes he even believed they were charlatans. The first time he'd met them, Saul thought Henry had said they were studying the refraction of light in a prison. "Are you familiar with these theories?

Details