5/10/17
(at this point, about a fourth into Acceptance, the third part of the trilogy).
I started reading this trilogy after seeing the trailer for Alex Garland's adaptation of Annihilation, which will presumably only cover the first book of the same title. Was immediately drawn in by the sparse prose in that first book, which follows a protagonist simply called the biologist into a mission to Area X, a mysterious zone that has appeared in the world at some point in the past and can only be reached through a gate in an otherwise impenetrable border. We learn over time that many such missions have existed (hers is numbered Twelfth, although it is later revealed that there were many more missions than the numbering would lead you to believe). Her companions also have been asked to give up their names for the mission, and go by designations like the psychologist, the anthropologist, and the surveyor.
In addition to the sparse prose, the very concept of the book is immediately captivating. Area X isn't explained because the scientists investigating it cannot explain it (there are several theories about how it came into existence, including aliens, none of which have any substantial proof behind it). As the twelfth expedition starts making their way through the area (what is later conceptualised as a terroir - a term provided by one of the scientists working to uncover the secrets on the other side of the border - loaned from winemaking, it describes the combination of environmental factors that go into the making of a particular wine), odd things start to creep into the narrative. I would probably describe the first book in particular as a environmental horror rather than science fiction, as the driving emotion and the most moving thing that drives the narrative forward is the transformation that takes place. The group encounters animals that have human facets (later, we are led to think about them as remnants of previous expeditions, turned into something else that is now haunting this place), and a "tunnel" (that, inexplicably, the biologist insists on calling a "tower", because it is like a buried tower, and language starts playing an essential role in all of it from the very beginning, even though the expedition left their linguist behind the border). The biologist finds writings on the wall of that tunnel that turn out to be a fungus in the shape of writing, the spores of which infect her because she doesn't take any precautions when she attempts to comprehend what she has found. She keeps the possible infection secret from the others and tries to monitor how it affects her, and very soon realises that the most obvious change in her is that she can now escape the psychologist's hypnotic commands, which keep the other team members under control.
Annihilation is a short book, and it tracks the progression of the biologist, providing a bit of backstory (like how her husband was on the previous eleventh expedition, returned without most of his memories, and died soon after of cancer, like everyone else on that mission), managing to portray a woman who is so essentially solitary that it seems almost inevitable how much she is drawn to Area X. It's not really made clear if her fascination, and her eventual decision not to leave, is rooted in who she was as a person before she even entered Area X (someone who loved to be in the field but always clashed with any kind of authority, or human intervention, someone who feels at home in nature and at odds in any kind of city or social environment), or in the person that she becomes when she is there. Everything collides into a beautiful and horrible climax once she makes her way deeper into the "tower", down the steps of the rabbit hole, when she encounters the creature that is creating the writings on the wall. It touches her, and seems to absorb her, or change her fundamentally on a genetic level. She survives the pain, somehow (at that point already being the sole survivor, after the anthropologist is killed by that same creature early in the book, after the psychologist has leaped to her death out of an odd conviction that the biologist is intending to kill her, after the biologist herself kills the surveyor out of self-defence). Instead of trying to be retrieved, she chooses to go where she believes her husband to be - because earlier, making her way to the lighthouse (a literal and metaphorical lighthouse, the core thing in her mission, where she ends up finding so many journals and documents that point to the long history of earlier missions, and tries to collect as much data as possible to understand, which ends up leading her nowhere, really), she has found her husband's journal and started to believe that the person who returned from that mission was a copy, that he never really returned.
I'd argue that Annihilation works as a completed novel in itself, that it doesn't even need the two books following it, if you escape the need for an explanation for Area X. I'm not yet at a point in the third book where an explanation exists (there is history, which I will get to later, but nothing like a coherent, logical, historical explanation yet), but her searching, her fascination with the biology, the way she is drawn into it, the way she starts to glow as she becomes more and more part of it, while still considering how her past influences her in all of this (memories seem to be really important here as well, how they shape identity and conceptions, how they root and unroot), make this into an incredibly captivating, self-contained story. I'm really curious to see this play out on the screen, where Alex Garland will rely on Natalie Portman communicating all of this (will there be narration? Will it all just be her ability to translate all of this into facial expressions?). Annihilation reminded me of so many other things, but the first one that came to mind, for the sheer solitary nature of the protagonist, was Die Wand / The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, which has also been turned into a marvelous film recently. The "border" in that book is as sudden an inexplicable as it is in this first book, and we are trapped within the limited world that the protagonist moves in, with no way of ever coming close to understanding why it is happening. She makes do, because she is resourceful and seems very capable of living in such an environment, and the biologist is similar in that regard. Existential danger comes in part from the environment itself, but for the most part, its other people and their intentions which threaten her the most.
But it's a trilogy, regardless, and the second book, Authority, moves outside Area X, into the Southern Reach which borders it, where government scientists have been working for a very long time (I'm not sure if the book gives us a precise timeline here, but the assumption is that all of this has happened maybe 40 or 50 years ago, as people from when it happened first are still alive, but old). Our new protagonist is Control (we do learn his actual name, but it suits to stick to what the book does, using job designations primarily to describe people), an intelligence officer of sorts who has taken over the agency from a predecessor who turns out to have been the psychologist, in disguise. He uncovers the inner workings of the agency, of the scientists who have obsessively attempted to comprehend this incomprehensible mystery, and the way that this work has changed them utterly. He also starts to understand the draw of Area X, which doomed the psychologist / former director when she decided to first go on an unsanctioned clandestine mission into what she had researched, and then join the twelfth mission in an official capacity. Even though we know that both the anthropologist and the surveyor perished in the previous book, they make a return here, having reappeared across the border (they are discarded in the first few pages though, and never return). He begins an odd relationship with the biologist, who has also reappeared, and is being held for questioning. He tries to uncover what she has learned across the border, but only starts to realize that this woman isn't quite the biologist that went into the mission (and the biologist here herself starts to realize she is just a copy with implanted memories). The inevitable happens eventually and like hs predecessor, Control can't help but go into Area X, taking the copy!biologist ("I am not the biologist") with him.
As much as Annihilation is biohorror, Authority starts out as a workplace thriller of sorts, the story of a man from outside an organisation coming in as an interloper and bumping against all the reservations of an established hierarchy, as well as the ambitions of the people he is now meant to lead, who seem unwilling to support him in breaking this whole mystery wide open. Like the first book, it's a balancing act between Control's backstory (informing who he is as a person: the son of a highly successful agent probably interfering with his work and an artist), until eventually the OTHER of Area X starts creeping into the story, transforming characters we've met into something else entirely. Plants that won't die, documents that reveal nothing but still carry the promise of mystery, and in the end, the inevitable draw of Area X, the way it pulls people in (early on he is warned not to stare at the gate too long, a warning he doesn't heed). It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, an inevitable circle. Control is drawn to the biologist from the beginning, just from studying the way she chose to reveal nothing about herself in her pre-mission interviews, and even more so wants he meets her in person (or meets the copy of her, in person). Instead of interrogating her, they start playing a game of mutual interrogation, where each of them is eager to find answers to essential questions.
Which brings us to the third book: where Control and whatever this version of the biologist that isn't quite the biologist have returned to Area X, while we learn more about the past, how it all began.
This is the story of the lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper, the beacon that was the centrepiece of all these missions (and sometimes I wonder if the tunnel/tower isn't a distraction, deliberately left off the maps, a counterpiece to the lighthouse, a dark tower buried in the ground that might hold a secret portal at the bottom). The lighthouse keeper, who was then turned into the crawler, doomed to write his sermon on the walls, transforming all those people entering Area X into something else, sending back copies doomed without their memories. For now, where I'm at now, it's the story of an old man awaiting retirement while beating back the forces of natural decay, and a young girl (the psychologist, as a child), conversing about the terroir, maintaining it while mysterious science/seance people take their measurements. It is not yet revealed what created it, and if the science/seance people contributed to the creation or merely were sent to try and comprehend it, a predecessor of the doomed agency that Control tried to beat back into shape. Or if it doesn't really matter what caused all of this, if in the end we have to accept that there is an incomprehensive aspect here, a true horror, the idea of something inexplicable slowly advancing, writing its own rules, dooming humanity's effort to scientifically explain everything while equally taking no care of its environment (perhaps the most lasting image in al of this is the thousands of white bunnies, sent into the border, fighting with all they have not to cross). We'll see where all of this goes.
Random notes, at this point:
- Many, many other things, maybe a trilogy that also thrives on all the other pieces of literature and film that have mapped similar territory. The inexplicable mysteries of Lost (never satisfyingly explained unless you're into religion as a deus ex machina), and even, somehow, because pop culture sometimes works that way, Star Trek Discovery, which introduces a space fungus with all the properties of a deus ex machina technology (a bioweapon but also, so much more) just as I was finishing Authority. The eloquent way in which Arrival conceptualises language as something that creates reality, which isn't that unlike how the Crawler's words inside the tower warp genetic reality like a self-replicating virus. Nature, and the way its beauty can sometimes become horrible in the blink of an eye, is so essential here, but at the same time, the self-contained (and very technological and decisively non-biological) horror of Cube and House of Stairs is very present, especially in Annihilation.
