Annihilation: A Novel: 1 (Southern Reach Trilogy)

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As I came close, did it surprise me that I could understand the language the words were written in? Yes. Did it fill me with a kind of elation and dread intertwined? Yes. I tried to suppress the thousand new questions rising up inside of me. In as calm a voice as I could manage, aware of the importance of that moment, I read from the beginning, aloud: " Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that…"

What can you do when your five senses are not enough? Because I still couldn’t truly see it here, any more than I had seen it under the microscope, and that’s what scared me the most. Why couldn’t I see it?” There may not be enough time in the world for that," the surveyor said. Of all of us, I think she had best grasped the implications of what we had seen: that we might now be living in a kind of nightmare. But the psychologist ignored her and sided with me. "We do need time. We should spend the rest of our day doing what we were sent here to do." Area X is no secret in VanderMeer’s novel. The public is well aware of its sudden appearance. This isn’t the case in the film; when Kane ( Oscar Isaac) is about to depart for his expedition, he can’t tell his biologist wife Lena ( Natalie Portman) where he’s headed. It’s not until his return and subsequent hospitalization that Lena is clued into what’s going on, before she also decides to infiltrate the Shimmer. Ventress herself will be leading another team into the Shimmer shortly, and Lena, who wants to know what happened to her husband, volunteers to join. For no obvious reason at all—if the team wanted a biologist, wouldn’t they have selected one themselves?—Ventress accepts Lena’s offer. So in they go: Ventress, Lena, a paramedic (Gina Rodriguez), a physicist (Tessa Thompson), and an anthropologist (Tuva Novotny). The logic behind the all-female team is given the most cursory of nods: Well, the previous groups were mostly military men, so why not?

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 McNary, Dave (31 October 2014). " 'Annihilation' Movie Gains Momentum at Paramount with Alex Garland". Variety.com . Retrieved 7 February 2018. Garland restructured the team and fleshed out each member. The psychologist ( Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the biologist, Lena, are fairly similar to their novel counterparts, but the other three members have different roles and functions. Gina Rodriguez plays a paramedic named Anya Thorensen, Tuva Novotny plays a magnetologist named Cass Sheppard, and Tessa Thompson plays a physicist named Josie Radek. All of their fates are ultimately different than in the book. Sheppard and Thorensen are both killed by a bear-like creature with an exposed skull, Radek willingly relinquishes herself to the Shimmer’s biological power, and the psychologist makes it to the lighthouse, where she transcends her physical form and is “annihilated” by an extraterrestrial force. A book about an intelligent, deadly fungus makes for an enthralling read—trust us.” — Tara Wanda Merrigan, GQ

Garland explained that his adaptation was necessarily based on only the first novel in the trilogy: "At the point I started working on Annihilation, there was only one of the three books. I knew that it was planned as a trilogy by the author, but there was only the manuscript for the first book. I really didn't think too much about the trilogy side of it." [10] Cellular biology professor and former U.S. Army soldier Lena is under interrogation. She was part of an expedition to an anomalous zone known as the "Shimmer", but she was the only one to return. With the tower, we knew none of these things. We could not intuit its full outline. We had no sense of its purpose. And now that we had begun to descend into it, the tower still failed to reveal any hint of these things. The psychologist might recite the measurements of the "top" of the tower, but those numbers meant nothing, had no wider context. Without context, clinging to those numbers was a form of madness. As the expedition gets smaller she becomes more and more desperate to understand why AREA X exists. The next day, the biologist sets out for the lighthouse while the surveyor stays behind. There, the biologist discovers hundreds of journals from past expeditions—far more than could have been written by only 12 expeditions—including her husband’s. Reading some of the journals, she realizes that most of what she and the other expeditions have been told about Area X is a lie, and she wonders why they keep sending expeditions there. In the journals, she reads of “unspeakable acts” committed by prior expeditions. She also finds a photograph of a man who she assumes to be the lighthouse keeper from before Area X was uninhabited.

I hope it's only about six feet deep so we can continue mapping," the surveyor said, trying to be lighthearted, but then she, and we, all recognized the term "six feet under" ghosting through her syntax and a silence settled over us. Are you joking? This is a joke, right?" the surveyor said. She looked poised to come down and prove me wrong, but didn't move from her position. 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 Miller, Laura (23 February 2014). " 'Annihilation': Doomed expedition into the unknown". Salon.com . Retrieved 29 August 2014. 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