Book Review: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Eco-fiction, cosmic horror, mystery... so many genres attached to Area X. Our need to understand this book creates an uncanny parallelism with the character's need to understand Area X.
A cosmic horror that looks into the very same Earth upon which we live, to criticise humanity's intrinsic need to understand, and how we cannot accept there are things beyond our limited comprehension of reality.
The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.
This is not the Lovecraftian cosmic horror of eldritch beings.
This is the horror of a system so alien and powerful we humans simply mean nothing to it. It is, ultimately, a cautionary tale where VanderMeer was (perhaps!) pointing out that humanity's need to comprehend (and thus to bend reality to our frameworks of knowledge) is a symptom of our arrogance—one that blinds us as to how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things.
Allow me to delve a bit more into this theme, since I find it fundamental.
If we remove ourselves from the book and look at reality, considering humanity's actions across history and how we perceive the universe (which is both the cosmos but also everything in our planet)… you may notice that everything is human-centric. From carving the planet to build cities, to assigning human-gestures to our pets instead of simply pondering how they may function differently.
That is the horror Annihilation is based on: the fact that Area X is a place unfathomable to human reason and where, ultimately, we are utterly irrelevant. Area X (the place our main character, the biologist, is sent to investigate) doesn't hate us... it simply doesn't care. Area X is a character on its own—one beyond human reason—and it is what it is; within it, humans either adapt, dissolve, or go mad trying to label it.
Annihilation is the 'show-don't-tell' advice taken to the extreme. Instead of telling the reader about how incomprehensible Area X is, VanderMeer forced its readers to experiment this place through the eyes of the biologist.
Which leads me to write a bit more about the characters.
The characters do not have names, just professions—and this is purely intended.
I am just the biologist; I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. I am aware that all of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. If I don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish.
On the one hand, the book hints this is an attempt of Southern Reach (the organisation sending the expeditions to Area X) to force the members to focus on their task. On the other hand, it is a deliberate attempt to dehumanise the characters and narrow them into a function—as if they were part of a living organising—by stripping them down of everything that makes them human.
The lack of character's names builds into the cosmic horror facet. It remarks that we—as the past and the memories that compose us, as the identity we have, as how unique we feel—are literally nothing to the environment of Area X. There is no individual there, no uniqueness, no experiences that matter; there is Area X and that's it.
On the other hand, this is a framed narrative told as journal entries of the biologist. She is, in all senses, a woman that had dedicated her whole life to bend reality to her understanding—she sought to comprehend ecosystems, to come up with reasons... and as she said, she gave more importance to fungi than to people. Thus, when she landed in Area X she did the same: try to understand what she couldn't understand.
It was a test of a fragile trust. It was a test of our curiosity and fascination, which walked side by side with our fear. A test of whether we preferred to be ignorant or unsafe.
Considering those two points, and to counter some reviews, to expect this book to be "character-driven" is to miss the point it is trying to make.
What matters—even if we cannot realise it as we read—is Area X. As I said before it is a character on its own: an incomprehensible, unfathomable character that will not bend to human comprehension.
A piece of advice would be to come to Annihilation assuming that everything written is put to the page with intention—one that we may not grasp on a first read. There are plenty of contradictions sowed across the book and left there to make the reader experience what the character does. For example, at some point, the biologist writes that she "hated anthropomorphising animals"—but then proceeds to describe some fruiting bodies as "little hands" or "small fists".
The contradiction is the entire point: the biologist denies anthropocentrism but cannot escape it either because, by living in a human society, she's been conditioned (as all of us have) to see the world through the framework of human-centric knowledge. There are many more examples of this (and of other clues), but I won't go into detail here.
Now, why is this labelled as eco-fiction?
Truth be told, I am not well-versed in this sub-genre, but my guess is the following: humanity has always shaped the environment to reflect us (building upon it, bending it to our limited understanding) while in Area X, nature has conquered. It absorbs humans, using to build other things (view spoiler), and cares not about the individualism we so treasure.
Within Area X, humanity is not the shaping force but the clay.
To close of…
This is not a book for everyone. If you're looking for "character-driven fiction", guided plots, and clear motivations... this is the wrong book for you. Annihilation forces its readers to feel as uncomfortable and lost as the biologist. It is an experience, and not one everybody would enjoy.
That said, if you’re keen on diving even deeper yet, I covered Annihilation in my podcast, discussing the very specific flavour of existentialism it presents:
The World Doesn't Need You: Existentialism in Annihilation
“My work amounted to a futile attempt to save us from who we are.” This is a quaint statement on the tendencies of humankind, as discussed in a book with so many facets as only purpose and perception have. I’m talking about Annihilation by Jeff VaderMeer.
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