The Southern Reach Trilogy

The Southern Reach Trilogy

I’ve recently finished The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer. His books are classified as science fiction, with some reviewers placing it in a sub-genre that they call eco-fiction. The story he tells in the trilogy is unsettling.  

Annihilation is like a bad psychedelic experience. Mind you, that’s not a criticism. It’s about an expedition sent into a region called Area X, the location of a disaster which has blocked entry to the area except through a single “portal”. Efforts to enter elsewhere along its border result in the death or disappearance of those attempting it. The government has set up a military blockade around it and spread disinformation to the effect that it is an environmental disaster zone. A government department, The Southern Reach, has been set up to administer study of the area, manage access to it, and to control information about it. It is this bureaucracy that has organized the expedition, the latest in a number of them undertaken over a period of decades. The four women members of this, the “eleventh” expedition are a psychiatrist, who is the leader; an anthropologist; a biologist, from whose point of view the story is told; and a surveyor. Relations among the members are constrained within a quasi-military structure that inhibits interaction between them based on anything other than their roles.

           Authority expands on the Kafkaesque overtones established in the first book in that it’s about the bureaucracy, The Southern Reach. It’s told primarily from the point of view of “Control”, who has been sent to replace the previous director who, it turns out, was the psychiatrist on the expedition described in the first book. He is in charge of debriefing the biologist, the only member to return. Ostensibly in charge of the project, he finds himself hemmed in by the agendas of both those who have placed him in charge and those whom he is supposed to be leading. The possession of information is the currency of power in everyone’s relations, the basis of which is the choice to share or withhold. It’s like a hall of mirrors in a madhouse that challenges the sanity of the inmates.

The third book is the continuation of the story after a disastrous event has caused the expansion of Area X. It follows the main characters of each of the first books, the biologist and Control, as they journey through Area X, and it brings some originally more peripheral characters into the foreground.  In discussing the books, I have tried to convey something about them without ruining the experience with spoilers. To that end, I will say nothing more about the books except that I consider them worthy of close readings. Books that engage me this way, I return to. I don’t think of them as works to be enjoyed so much as experienced. Much of the pleasure to be derived from them has to do with how they accord in some way with your perception of modern life.