"Dawn (Xenogenesis #1)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1987

"Dawn (Xenogenesis #1)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1987

Dawn tells a tale of mass alien abduction and colonization. The human race has perished in a worldwide conflagration, apparently of human origin. Published initially in the late 1970s, Dawn suggests that nuclear war may have been (and might still be) the cause of humanity’s (self)destruction. An alien race, the Oankali, discovers earth and has the technology to regenerate individuals from small sets of genetic material. Dawn opens with one such human, Lilith, waking up and trying to make sense of what’s happened to her. Her captors remain unseen, but she soon discovers that they are aliens who travel the galaxy in search of “trades.”  They are willing to assist humanity, helping it recover from destruction and flourish again — but at a price. The Oankali seek genetic material, and they essentially interbreed with the races they discover, adding to their gene pool some of the best characteristics and qualities of those races and imparting some of their own better qualities and abilities in exchange. For instance, we learn that Oankali have amazing self-healing abilities.

The Oankali have identified, however, a fundamental flaw in humanity: a genetic gift for intelligence coupled with a predisposition to hierarchy. Such in turn leads humanity to figure out better ways to create divisions amongst people, impose order, punish deviation from “normalcy,” and engage in war to ensure the status quo.

The “price” of interbreeding with the Oankali is that this contradiction will be bred out of the race, and humans will transform over time into human/Oankali hybrids. As one of the ooloi interbreeders tells Lilith, “Our children will be better than either of us. […] We will moderate your hierarchical problems and you will lessen our physical limitations. Our children won’t destroy themselves in a war, and if they need to regrow a limb or to change themselves in some other way they’ll be able to do it. And there will be other benefits.”  With this genetic twist, Butler dispenses with merely titillating scenes of interspecies sex in favor of grounding such intercourse in necessity. We will have to interbreed to survive.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

"Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

The concluding installment of the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, 2014; Authority, 2014) ends where the story began: in a cloud of hallucinatory mystery. We leave knowing more about Area X than we started; we may not understand it any better, but we leave transformed, as do all travelers to that uncanny place.

"Acceptance" takes us back inside the mix of pristine wilderness and Lovecraftian madness that is Area X. The area is spreading, and all of our primary characters find themselves trapped inside. Through a mix of journal entries and other point-of-view shifts both past and present we explore the secrets that Area X still keeps. The primary PoV characters are Saul (the lighthouse keeper referenced in the other novels, who was present through the creation of Area X), the Director/the Psychologist, the Biologist and Ghost Bird, and Control. In particular we get the run-down on the Director’s previous trip into Area X (with Whitby) before the twelfth expedition took place. We finally find out more or less what Area X is and how it came to be, but it isn’t explored too thoroughly. The wrap-up of the series doesn’t take away too much of the mystery and madness that made Annihilation so special; nor does it leave too much unexplained. I found it to be just the right balance.

I think every writer has words and images that they return to. I thought it spoke to the heart of this series that the words and concepts that seem to return repeatedly are compost, colonizing, and stitching. They all work themselves neatly into the secret heart of the madness that seethes within every inch of Area X. I’m frankly surprised to see a story such as this trilogy that can maintain that Lovecraftian sense of madness and horror while also providing just enough explanation to satisfy a modern audience.

I found Saul’s story particularly interesting. Even though it’s largely a means to an end for a fascinating reveal, Vandermeer gives Saul plenty of personality and layers, as well as a connection to the modern-day story through the Director/the Psychologist.

The original Annihilation is still my favorite of the trilogy, but the story as a whole is fantastic. There’s enough detail that I think it will reward re-reading a time or two as well. In particular there are some uses of hypnosis that cast previous events in a very different light.

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.




Some interesting points from others I found on the web:

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Anyways:|

Uh, on to the "plot" of Vandermeer's. Well, semiotics aside, my best guess is that Area X is this sort of a "Noah's Ark" for a (very different) sort of extraterrestrial life that can, at its whim, transcend spacetime. Remember the flashes/visions that Saul had, of a "burning comet falling from the sky"? Something crashed in front of him, OR, he saw the crashing in a vision AFTER he was "infected" (or initiated) by the 8-petal-flower-of-brightness. Another character had such a vision, I can't recall if it was Ghost Bird, the Director or Control. The image was of total devastation by stars falling. So, basically, what happens is this (rough draft, ha ha):

1. Alien species which we will call the Brightness exists on a far away world which has similar biology and ecology to ours (remember, expedition members into Area X couldn't at first grasp they were in fact on another 'planet' (the unfamiliar night sky and the ripples in the sky), because the flora and fauna were similar - OR, Earth's flora and fauna were transported somewhere far away to preserve life).

2. An apocalyptic event wipes out most of the Brightness species.

3. Instinctively, or technologically, the Brightness somehow (this was sort of described in a passage of someone's ruminations, in Acceptance), "seek out" a fertile world for themselves to "seed" (or some sort of technology or primal organism of theirs). Having the ability to travel through space and warp time, for some reason, an amount of their "brightness" gets trapped into one of the two lighthouses, where it hibernates. (The glass of the beacon, the lens.)

4. For some reason, the S&SB are sent to investigate for paranormal phenomena in the area, and eventually, they (Henry and Suzanne) pin down the "phenomenon" - they find the anomalous 'light', something happens, it or they break the glass lens where it is 'stuck', after which the brightness (seed) falls down where then, Saul sees it, is attracted to it, touches it, and so it enters him/infects him, and starts to change him. With its ephemeral or light-based biology intertwined with his, there seems to be also some kind of 'species' memory transfer, via DNA or something else - he recalls a 'burning star' crashing in front of him, but then sees nothing. Two solutions to this: it was a memory, so it didn't happen to him (but was a racial/DNA memory of the demise of the alien species), OR, it was real, and he, getting "Brightened" attracted another "brightness seed" to his location in Area X/The Forgotten Coast. This second landing was in fact the topographical anomaly site, and the crash in fact created the Tower, which is just a camouflaged crater/impact site, on the bottom of which, as we discover in the finale of Acceptance, is a portal but ALSO ANOTHER FLOWER (so, a seed, an alien in effect), which guards or is placed near the portal. Remember, the first flower infected Saul, the second flower infected Whitby (he saw it bloom, probably touched it, no one saw this except him, but after that he changed!), and the third "visitor" is obviously kept at the bottom of the Tower, which may well have arrived by the crash Saul saw many years prior.

5. In the meantime, Southern Reach tries to make sense of this. The alien visitors function as either symbiotes or parasites to a human host - depending on the host. In Saul's case, the alien completely takes him over, internally shutting him out and externally mutating him to extreme extents, so he becomes the Crawler. Whitby is also completely taken over, or driven mad. However, those are contacts of a certain kind, where a flower of light infects them. The biologist, though, and others, are infected via a sort of spore, a second type of encounter, like the writing on the wall from the Crawler/Saul. The interesting part about this is that, once someone is infected by this second way, the spores, they become two people, a clone is formed. Then, battle commences, and usually the original is killed (remember, most of those who return from Area X, have to enter the Tower, meet and get infected by the Crawler, and exit via the portal on its bottom. Also remember - in Annihilation, the Biologist and her crewmates discover a dead body lying on the stairs, down in the tower. The body (or was it bodies?) seemed to have died without a struggle... In essence, they were the dead originals, whose clones traversed the portal and exited Area X). So basically, these Brightness alien species control a portal through which they send faux copy-humans, perhaps as sort of expendable sentries, because they lack complete memory, and they die soon (the biologist being one example, not sure why - perhaps because she was already internally disciplined and detached from her personality. Because what the Crawler's spores can clone is that which is not attached to one's semiotic mental identification - therefore, most of the other candidates end up almost wiped out when cloned by the Crawler and die soon. But the biologist, who identified herself with her profession, got cloned (or was she cloned?) more completely, because large chunks of her neuro-semiotic-identity were left intact after she got infected by the brightness? But we also meet the fully mutated "biologist". Hmmm... Confusing. Perhaps the clones are sent back to explore, and the originals, if not killed, are mutated per the rules of the Area X 'alien planet' ecology).

6. Uuuuummm. So basically, to me, it's a (first?) contact story. Although, a weird one, because the alien species are... well, very weird, incomplete (because possibly pretty much wiped out too), and very alien regarding their modes of operation and communication. There is a very strong possibility of an invasion, though.

If I get any other good guesses... I'll share. For now... this is pretty much it, barring something I've forgotten (and undoubtedly I have).

P.S. Both Ghost Bird and Control didn't get infected by the flower before the portal on their way out. The placement of this flower right before the portal may be strategic - if infected by it, another "Crawler" will go OUT of Area X and EXPAND the borders of Area X even further. And what/who expanded the borders of Area X the second time...? That's right, Whitby. How? Probably touched the flower! DAMN! 

"Authority (Southern Reach, #2)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

"Authority (Southern Reach, #2)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

Area X is a spooky no man’s land controlled by an unknown entity (aliens?); 1,500 people have died there since its emergence 30 years ago. The Southern Reach is the secret government agency monitoring it, so we get office politics. Its last director, leader of the expedition described in Annihilation, is missing, presumed dead. 

This volume is narrated by the newly installed acting director, John Rodriguez, who wants to be called Control. That’s ironic, for unlike le Carré’s same-named pooh-bah, this Control’s authority is tenuous. He owes the job to his mother, a powerful figure at Central, and the assistant director, Grace, is determined to undermine him. Moreover, after three decades of failing to solve the riddle of Area X, Southern Reach is a backwater and morale is low; Control’s mission is to shake things up. First he must get a handle on Area X. He interviews the biologist, a survivor of the last expedition and protagonist of Annihilation, but draws a blank. She is stubbornly tight-lipped. He visits the border, bathed in a strange light, and watches video from the doomed first expedition. He reports to the Voice, a person in Central whose gender is disguised by technology. There are some minor frissons, as when Control discovers an unhinged scientist creating a nightmarish mural, but these are slim pickings compared to the horrors of Annihilation (an essential introduction). Nor does he measure up to the biologist in complexity. His background (Honduran sculptor father, multiple postings, multiple girlfriends) seems cobbled together, and the espionage elements, lackluster. 

Toward the end, there will be a spectacular development, a late reward after all the shadowboxing.

My rating ★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.

"Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

"Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

In Annihilation, the novelist and publishing entrepreneur Jeff VanderMeer sets out to create a lasting monument to the uncanny by revisiting – without embellishment, and with a pitiless focus on physical and psychological detail – some very old ground. An alien invasion site. Assimilative spores. An unfurling of promiscuous alien biology.

On the first page we are told that the women's enterprise is doomed. Their equipment is either nonsensical, or inadequate, or antiquated. Their training and instructions are sometimes vague, sometimes misleading. They cannot recall the moment they crossed into Area X, and they have no clear idea how they will leave. They cannot agree about what they are seeing (a shaft? a tower? a throat?) and three of them are all the while half-aware of being hypnotically manipulated by their team leader.

The uncanny, by VanderMeer's measure, is not, and never was, a thing. It is, and has always been, the actual state of the world. Familiarity is a fiction we perpetuate through psychological necessity. The closer the nameless biologist comes to this reazisation, the more she falls back on her scientific training – not in any petulant, pedantic way, but rather as a means of limiting the kinds of questions she needs to ask the world, and of her rapidly transmogrifying self.You enter Area X with them, thinking the uncanny must lurk in some particular spot. The lighthouse? The reed beds? The "tower"? Very quickly you spot your mistake, as a subtle, well-engineered wrongness turns up in every character, every deed, every observation until, at last, you find yourself afraid to turn the page.

Infected early in the book, she wonders if she has "changed sides", become more "X" than human. She decides the question is meaningless. "A religious or superstitious person, someone who believed in angels or in demons, might see it differently. Almost anyone else might see it differently. But I am not those people, I am just the biologist; I don't require any of this to have a deeper meaning."

From this self-destructively objective vantage point, there can be no "us" or "them", no threshold to cross, no home to flee to when all's done. Science is there to handle the uncanny, and the biologist's declaration near the end of the book – "Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish" – is anything but an expression of doubt. It is as stirring in its admission of human frailty and ambition as Beckett's "You must go on. / I can't go on. / I'll go on."

A suspenseful book, Annihilation catches one's attention with a powerful narrator and a fantastical world. The voice of the biologist is strong, creating a kinship between the main character and the reader, and her need to uncover the truth of Area X draws the reader in. Furthermore, VanderMeer's skill in writing is showcased through powerful scenic description that conjures a new world before the mind's eye. The reader becomes entranced, sharing the biologist's need to discover the unknown of Area X no matter the cost. However, the book creates more questions than it answers, ultimately leaving the reader confused. We are given thousands of possibilities as to what Area X could be, but by the end the reader feels as if they know less than they knew in the beginning. All in all, Annihilation is a gripping book that keeps one reading long into the night. Those interested in science fiction with beautiful prose and magical scenery will be unable to put it down, while those with an interest in mystery will be pulled along by the story waiting to be uncovered from the very first pages of the book. This is reinforced by the strong main character, ultimately creating an all-around sensational reading experience. 

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - Wow. I loved it!

Plot from Wikipedia:

Plot[edit]

A team of four cross the border into an uninhabited area known as Area X. The group consists of an anthropologist, surveyor, biologist, and psychologist. None of the team is ever identified by name. The story is told through the biologist's field journal. They are part of the 12th expedition into Area X, and it is revealed that the biologist's husband was part of the previous expedition into the same area. The narrator's husband returned unexpectedly from the expedition, showing up in their kitchen without any recollection of how he got there. The rest of his expedition show up similarly. A few months later he died of cancer along with the others in the 11th expedition.

After the first night spent at the base camp, the 12th expedition come upon a set of spiral stairs into the ground. Inside the staircase (which the biologist repeatedly calls a tower), they find cursive writing that begins with the words "Where lies the strangling fruit...." The writing appears to consist of a plant material growing several inches from the exterior wall. While the biologist is examining the writing, she accidentally inhales spores from one of the script-defining growths. After returning from the tower, the biologist discovers that the psychologist, who is the appointed leader, has programmed the group with certain triggers via hypnosis. By saying the phrase "consolidation of authority," everyone except the biologist immediately enters a state of hypnosis. The biologist believes that the spores she has inhaled have made her immune to the hypnotic suggestions and influence of the psychologist. The group decides to return to base camp for the night. At dusk, they hear a moaning noise from far away.

"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 gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dim lit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been."^[7]

After spending the night at the base camp, the anthropologist is missing the next morning; the psychologist claims the anthropologist decided to leave and returned to the border. The group then make their way back to the "tower" where the surveyor and narrator descend back down the stairs while the psychologist stands watch. Eventually, the surveyor and biologist come upon the body of the anthropologist. It is believed she came into contact with the writer of the text on the wall (which the narrator names the Crawler). When the group returns to the top, they find the psychologist missing.

The biologist and surveyor decide to return to the base camp after a fruitless search for the psychologist. That night the biologist sees a light from the area of a distant lighthouse. The next day she leaves for the lighthouse while the surveyor stays behind. At the lighthouse, she finds a pile of journals from past expeditions, indicating that there have been many more expeditions than they had been told - among them is her husband's journal. The immediately preceding expedition which included her husband was actually "expedition 11g", with others stretching back to "11a", and so on. She also finds a photograph of what she thinks is the lighthouse keeper from 30 years previously, when Area X had been abandoned. Near the base of the lighthouse, she finds the psychologist seriously injured. The psychologist becomes frightened by the biologist's approach and screams the word "Annihilation" repeatedly, which she later reveals is supposed to induce suicide in the biologist through hypnotic suggestion. The psychologist also reveals she had leapt from the top of the lighthouse trying to escape an unknown entity. Before dying, the psychologist tells the narrator that the border is expanding slowly northward. She also says that the biologist now has started to glow, her body emitting a dim yellow light.

On her way back to base camp, the biologist has a close encounter with the moaning animal she hears every night in the reeds. She is able to escape though she is ambushed by the surveyor. They exchange gun fire and the biologist manages to outflank and kill the surveyor, but is wounded in the process. She learns that being injured impedes the process of her "brightening" but that as she recovers whatever it is continues to take over her body.

Now the only surviving member of their expedition, the biologist takes time to analyse material she found on her way to the lighthouse and realizes that certain moss and decayed "animals" have human cells. She also finally reads her husband's journal of his expedition with an all-male team of eight explorers. The biologist's husband's team found the "tower" on their fifth day but did not explore it, moving to the lighthouse first. After discovering the huge pile of journals the team of explorers split up with two members choosing to explore the "tower", four deciding to remain in the lighthouse and the biologist's husband and his team's surveyor choosing to explore the land beyond the lighthouse. Finding that Area X seemed to stretch out indefinitely they returned to the lighthouse only to find that their team's psychologist had been murdered by a beast and then had somehow been resurrected and the rest of the men had turned on one another. Returning to the tower the biologist's husband and the surveyor were unable to find the other two men. They later see doppelgängers of all the men (including themselves) except the psychologist, entering the tunnel. At this point the two remaining men decide to abandon their mission. The surveyor tries to return to the border via the way they crossed; however, the biologist's husband decides to repair a boat and try to cross back by following the shore.

Having read her husband's journal, the biologist decides to return to the tunnel to see if she can find the Crawler. She makes her way down the spiral staircase and eventually finds the Crawler. After a nearly fatal encounter she looks back to see the un-aged face of the lighthouse keeper within it, focused on the writing on the wall. The book closes with the biologist stating she doesn't plan to return home. Instead she decides to stay in Area X and find perhaps any part of her late husband's presence which she believes remains somewhere in Area X.