Tag: Jeff VanderMeer

The Weird Meets the Mundane: Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an author whose work is weird, in the best sense of the word. He uses elements of fantasy and horror to create a strange atmosphere of creeping unease. And in Authority, the second volume of his Southern Reach trilogy, he transfers that atmosphere from the wilderness setting of Annihilation into the mundane world of office politics.

The results are even more weird.

Uncanny Meets Mundane

Authority follows on from the expedition depicted in Annihilation, in which a group of experts are sent to explore the warped territory of Area X. A new character, who refers to himself as Control, is taking over the Southern Reach, the facility tasked with investigating and explaining Area X. In doing so he investigates what happened on the previous mission, . But his task is hindered as much by office politics and the schemes of his superiors as by the weirdness that has seeped into the minds of anyone dealing with Area X. As these elements become entangled, Control struggles with a situation slipping out of his control.

This makes for a read that is unsettling without being horrifying in the traditional sense. As with Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, the tension lies as much in the struggle for sanity as the struggle against arcane forces. But with the stakes of success or failure much less clear, the sense of bewilderment is at times extraordinary.

Definitely Art

This book is like nothing else I’ve ever read. The tone, style and content build a fog of confusion around the reader as well as Control. I experienced his struggle to get a grip on anything around him. Transferring that from the strange territory of Area X to the familiar surroundings of an office made it feel even more like something wrong was invading the real world, like ordinary things were being turned subtly on their heads.

It makes for a fascinating read, though one that lacks the satisfaction of pay-offs. This seems like a deliberate strategy on VanderMeer’s part. The plot turn most authors would have used as a midway point or early call to adventure arrives near the end. Some things are explained or resolved, both in the world building and in the plot, but more are left open, contributing to the sense of unease.

This book is incredibly successful at evoking an atmosphere, and if you like to sink into the strange or see a writer try something novel then it’s well worth a read. On the other hand, if you don’t like to be confused, if you want plenty of plot, if you want a story to be clear and accessible, you should avoid this one like the plague.

Personally, I enjoyed it immensely, and I look forward to reading the final volume. After these first two, I have no idea whether VanderMeer will provide explanation and resolution. As long as he continues to execute the books with such skill, I won’t mind either way.

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If after all that you’re looking for more fantasy reading, my own collection of short stories By Sword, Stave or Stylus is free on Amazon until the end of tomorrow. From the melancholy gutterscum living in a rooftop world to a gladiator painting with manticore blood, it has plenty of variety, if not the sheer unsettling nature of Authority.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer – the good sort of wtf

It’s not often that I get to the end of a book and don’t know what to think or feel. Jeff VanderMeer‘s Annihilation, the first part of his Southern Reach Trilogy, achieves that, in a good way.

Annihilation is a tricky book to describe. It’s probably fantasy, maybe horror, with what looks like a contemporary setting. Narratively, it’s the story of an expedition into the mysterious Area X, a part of the world where the normal rules of reality don’t apply. Sent to explore the area, the expedition has its own strange rules meant to combat the madness of Area X. Except those rules are themselves disorienting and dehumanising.

The story is told through the unreliable narrative of the expedition’s nameless biologist, and portrays her response to the bewildering nature of Area X and the disintegration of the people around her. Or possibly her descent into madness. Or possibly both. It’s hard to tell. And along the way, she gets to grips with her own identity and sense of purpose.

I’m told that H P Lovecraft’s horror writing created stories in which even smart people could convincingly be over-whelmed and destroyed, because the forces arrayed against them were just too much for anyone to cope with. That’s how Annihilation feels. The biologist is smart, but from the outset Area X is so strange that there’s a real tension around whether she can survive the expedition, and how it will affect her.

If you watched any of the TV show Lost, you’ll probably remember hitting a point where you realised that the island just didn’t make sense, and probably never would. Annihilation is like that, except that it feels like the lack of coherence is a deliberate ploy by the author, not the result of a TV production throwing madness at the screen and praying that it would make sense.

To quote a speech from one of my favourite films (and please excuse the f-bombs), feeling fucked up doesn’t mean that you’re fucked up. Feeling fucked up is a sane response to a fucked up situation. That’s what this book portrays, and it evokes it incredibly well.

Annihilation isn’t hard work in the sense of being dense or massively long. But its strange natures requires a willingness to let go of your assumptions about how a story will pan out and how a fantastical world will be presented. It’s fascinating. It’s dark. It’s something I want more of, and I don’t even know why. If you like weird things, then give it a go.

Lessons learned – VanderMeer’s Booklife

Last week I finished reading Jeff Vandermeer‘s Booklife. This is a guide for writers that focuses on lifestyle and the business of writing, things like keeping motivated and how to publicise your work, rather than writing technique.

I knew I was going to find a lot that was useful in this one. I’d originally picked it up from the library and got twenty pages in before I knew I needed my own copy, to dog-ear and scrawl notes across, to mark pages with post-its and crease the spine back while I poured over the most useful pages. Because for me, books are like childhood teddy bears – the best ones don’t get kept in pristine condition, they get loved nearly to death.

It’s hard to sum up what I learned from this book, or even pick out favourite bits. There was so much that pushed me to think about the fundamentals of a writing lifestyle, sometimes succinctly pulling together advice I’d heard elsewhere, sometimes offering new insights and tactics. To be honest, I ended up feeling almost overwhelmed, these was so much to think about.

But if I’m going to pull out one lesson, it’s the importance of planning. As I touched on on Friday, my approach to this blog and to publicising my work has been haphazard at best, as has my thinking about what to write and where to send it. I should have known better – I’ve worked as a professional project manager – but somehow I never properly applied those skills to my writing life. Until I read Booklife I wasn’t applying that to many significant areas. Heck, I still haven’t applied it yet – that’s the thing about a planned approach, you can’t apply it until you’ve had time to do that planning.

A lot of the content of Booklife is ahead of what I need at the moment. Some of it’s ahead of what I can use. But it’s useful to know that that information’s on my bookshelf when I need it. Like any advice, I’ll pick and choose, adapt it to my own situation. But there’s a lot there of value, and even if it just helps me to plan better it’ll be worth it.