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| Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2014, Eric Nyquist |
Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 "Southern Reach Trilogy" consists of three novels:
Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance. Published within
months of each other, the three novels adopt the viewpoints of several main
characters as they face an "Earth-bound" ecological mystery with
extraterrestrial undertones.
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| Fourth Estate 2014, Kai and Sunny |
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Fourth Estate 2014-15, Tyler Comrie and Rodrigo Corral |
In the 30 years since Area X's mysterious and sudden manifestation, a governmental organization named the Southern Reach has been mounting expeditions into the region. At the beginning of Annihilation, 11 previous expeditions have been sent into the region, with most not returning intact (or at all). Additionally, recent returning expedition members have been reappearing at their homes without their returns being sighted by border guards. These returnees also seem to have "dimmed" personalities, with no memory of their experiences inside the zone.
Detailed synopses for each book follow, as well as a proposed "history of Area X" based on accounts described in all three volumes.
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| Kunstmann 2014-18 |
ANNIHILATION
This first novel is presented as a first person account by a biologist who describes her unique experiences inside Area X during the 12th expedition. As she begins to learn some of the secrets behind the bizarre phenomena encountered inside Area X, the rest of her expedition is slowly destroyed.
- 01: INITIATION: After making their way through Area X's bizarre, shimmering "border gateway", the four members of the 12th expedition (made up of a biologist, psychologist, surveyor and anthropologist, all female) make their way towards a base camp established by their predecessors. On the way, they stumble upon an uncharted entrance into an underground well (which the biologist strangely perceives as a "tower" extending downwards). The biologist descends down the inverse tower's stairwell to discover bizarre, dark, sermon-like writing on the walls, manifested in the form of fungus growths. At one point, the fungus releases spores which the biologist accidentally inhales, after which she decides to halt further explorations for the day. She later learns that this fungal exposure has made her resistant to the psychologist's hypnotic suggestions (apparently intended to be used without the other team members' conscious knowledge in order to bolster the group's confidence).
- 02: INTEGRATION: The next morning, when the anthropologist is found to be missing, the psychologist tells the others that the anthropologist had decided to abandon the mission and returned to the border entrance. Afterwards, while the psychologist waits above, the biologist and the surveyor make a second descent into the well, which the biologist begins to perceive as a living organism of sorts. They soon notice "slime trails" on the stairs as well as boot prints left by a previous explorer. During the descent, the biologist thinks about her husband, a member of the previous expedition who had mysteriously come back in a somewhat "flattened" mental state and after 6 months then died of cancer. In the tower staircase, the biologist and the surveyor discover the burned body of the anthropologist. The biologist deduces that during the night the psychologist must have used hypnosis to induce the anthropologist into descending into the well, where she had then encountered the creature (dubbed the "Crawler") writing on the stairwell walls. They theorize that when the anthropologist had been ordered to obtain "a sample" from the creature, she must have been killed by the Crawler. When the biologist and the surveyor emerge from the stairwell, they discover that the psychologist has abandoned them before they could confront her. That night, the biologist sees a light emanating from the top of a lighthouse, another important landmark on the map charted by previous expeditions. Assuming that the psychologist might be there, she decides to head towards it, although the surveyor elects to remain behind at the base camp.
- 03: IMMOLATION: The biologist stops at an abandoned village on her way to the lighthouse, where she finds human-shaped moss growths occupying some of the buildings. Later, she sees a pair of dolphins swim by in a nearby canal, one of which seems to have a strangely human-like eye. At the lighthouse, the biologist discovers the bloody remnants of some unknown battle on the entrance and walls, as if the lighthouse had been under siege. In the lantern room at the top of the lighthouse, the biologist discovers a trap door leading to a hidden chamber filled with hundreds of expedition journals, implying that there must have been many more than 11 previous expeditions to Area X before her own. She soon realizes that the briefings given to her by the Southern Reach had been incomplete. After retrieving her husband's final journals from near the top of the pile, the biologist returns to the lantern room above.
- 04: IMMERSION: At the bottom of the lighthouse, she finds the psychologist, mortally-injured after she had leaped from the top of the lighthouse (induced by a fear of some unnatural force). Prior to her fall she had tried to shoot the biologist as she approached the lighthouse, but somehow had been inhibited from firing (possibly due to her perceiving the biologist as having been changed by the spores she had inhaled in the tower stairwell). The psychologist also tells her that Area X is gradually expanding its borders and soon dies of her wounds. Afterwards, the biologist notices that part of the psychologist's injured body has been taken over by a glowing mold, probably from contact with the "Crawler" in the well-tower when the anthropologist had been consumed. In a note on the psychologist's body, she discovers that the word "annihilation" had been a word designed to trigger feelings of immediate suicide amongst her fellow team members in case of an emergency. As the biologist leaves the lighthouse, she notices that the moss from the psychologist's corpse has begun erupting with green light. While trying to return to the base camp, the biologist discovers a human-shaped "molting" on the ground resembling the psychologist from the 11th expedition (who had returned unharmed and reported nothing unusual). A "moaning" creature (presumably the just-molted creature) chases her but she outruns it. Near the base camp, her now-altered state (which she perceives as a "brightness") allows her to sense danger and she manages to avoid getting shot by the surveyor in an ambush attack. She kills the surveyor and finds the base camp in shambles, but also discovers indications that the surveyor may have killed a reanimated version of the anthropologist.
- 05: DISSOLUTION: After examining tissue samples under a microscope, the biologist confirms that Area X is transforming humans into unnatural "fruiting bodies" (the bodies in the village are found to be human-derived and her exposure to the spores in the stairwell now cause her to glow with a green light). The biologist reads her husband's last journal and learns that most of his team had killed each other in a fit of paranoia at the lighthouse. He had also seen "doppelgangers" of his deceased team descend into the stairwell-tower, after which he had decided to journey up the coast in a canoe, hoping to escape Area X. The biologist wonders if the dolphin she had seen might have been her husband transformed. After descending down the stairwell-tower, the biologist finally encounters the Crawler herself, an indescribable, shapeless force (still writing on the wall) which tries to consume her as it had done with the anthropologist. However, due to her own "infected" nature, the biologist is able to survive this "annihilation" and continue downwards. She tries to reach a glowing door (somewhat reminiscent of the border entrance to Area X itself), but for some reason finds herself driven back upwards. As she passes by the Crawler on her way up, she glimpses the face of a man deep inside it, one matching a photograph of the original keeper of the lighthouse from 30 years ago. After returning to the lighthouse, she writes down an account of her experiences and places it atop the mound of journals in the secret room. She also notices various forms of strange life milling about the region, apparently transformed remnants of past expeditions. Eventually, she heads up north along the coast hoping to find her husband.
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| Destino 2014, Pablo Delcan |
AUTHORITY
Authority, the second volume of the Southern Reach trilogy, describes
the aftermath of the 12th expedition, and the efforts of the Southern Reach's
new acting director (a former espionage agent named "Control") to salvage the
seemingly-stalled operation. During this sequence, Control slowly comes to
realize that the Southern Reach itself has long been compromised by "alien"
elements, and eventually follows in the footsteps of the 12th expedition's
biologist in order to further excavate Area X's secrets.
INCANTATIONS
- 000: A man named Control dreams of falling from a great height into a sea filled with gigantic creatures.
- 001: FALLING: A month after the biologist, surveyor and anthropologist have returned from Area X (somehow bypassing guard posts and reappearing at their homes, or in the case of the biologist in an empty lot), Control is sent to the Southern Reach as a replacement for the missing Director (who had actually posed as the psychologist on the 12th expedition). Control interrogates the biologist (who desires to be called "Ghost Bird", a nickname given to her by husband) but gets very few answers.
- 002: ADJUSTMENTS: Control is informed that even prior to 30 years ago, strange lights and other phenomena had been reported in the coastal area now defined by Area X's shimmering border. After removing surveillance bugs from his new office (previously the Director's), Control then meets a man named named Whitby who takes Control down to the science division.
- 003: PROCESSING: Control learns that at one point the scientists had sent hundreds of rabbits into the border field in an attempt to "overload" the field, but the rabbits had just disappeared from sight after penetrating the border perimeter, and no video transmissions returned from rabbits equipped with cameras from beyond it. The scientists also theorize that the force causing the strange phenomena in Area X might not be the source of the invisible border surrounding Area X, that in fact the border may act as a "containment" field of the forces in Area X. The scientists also do not know why the 15-foot wide gate allowing humans to pass into the zone unharmed suddenly appeared one day. Control reports his findings to the "Voice" (his mysterious superior), who demands more progress.
-
004: REENTRY: Back at home in the nearby town of Hedley, Control considers
how his mother (a high level spy who had once been stationed at the Southern
Reach) had been the one to get him his new posting there.
RITES
- 005: THE FIRST BREACH: Back at his office, Control finds a locked drawer in the Director's desk. Inside, he discovers a strange plant next to a dead mouse, as well as a strangely-damaged, old-fashioned cellphone.
- 006: TYPOGRAPHICAL ANOMALIES: Control also discovers strange sermon-like words written on a secret wall of the Director's office, and below it a hand-drawn map of Area X. In a second interview with Ghost Bird, Control fails to get any new information (she claims not to recall any kind of underground tower).
- 007: SUPERSTITION: When Control shows Grace (the Southern Reach's assistant director), Whitby and a linguist names Hsu the Director's scrawled handwriting on the hidden wall, Grace tells Control that the cadence of the words is similar to the sermons once given by the lighthouse keeper, Saul Evans, and have been found inside the walls of the underground well-tower. Although some at the Southern Reach fear that the words may have something to do with the birth of Area X, Hsu believes that it is the medium of living tissue that is important, not the actual words.
- 008: THE TERROR: When Whitby sees the strange plant and dead mouse, he mutters "the terror" for some unknown reason. Afterwards, he and another frustrated scientist named Cheney drive Control out towards the border gate.
- 009: EVIDENCE: In the psychologist's office, Whitby and Grace tell Control that the Director's mysterious plant (grown from a sample retrieved from Area X) somehow resists all attempts to kill it. When visiting the Southern Reach's samples vault, Control sees that the samples appear normal, but suspects them of mutating themselves when not being observed. Whitby also explains that his earlier utterance of "the terror" was actually the French word "terroir", implying that he believed the environment itself might have summoned Area X due to its own properties. Nearing Area X's border, Control learns that some of the rabbits sacrificed to the border did return intact and were later taken away by pet lovers, while others were eaten by the staff. Control finally sees the border gate and is mesmerized by the strange light.
- 010: FOURTH BREACH: Cheney tells Control of a rumor that the psychologist had crossed over into Area X alone before the 12th expedition. Control also notices a squashed mosquito on his windshield which he does not recollect squashing.
-
011: SIXTH BREACH: Back at his home, Control wonders if an institution like
the Southern Reach might generate its own emotional state or attitude. That
night he doesn't dream but hears something crawling on the roof.
- 012: SORT OF SORTING: While trying to organize papers left behind in the Director's office, Control begins to suspect that the Director had been creating her own agenda, her own "terroir" at the Southern Reach.
- 013: RECOMMENDATIONS: When Control meets with Grace, she accuses him of ransacking and bugging her office.
- 014: HEROIC HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION: While visiting Ghost Bird's cell, Control notices that the walls are decorated with false victory portraits of previous expeditions. Ghost Bird tells Control a little of her experience at the lighthouse, including the discovery of the discarded journals from previous expeditions.
- 015: SEVENTH BREACH: Control encounters Whitby in a distraught state near a storage closet, and they discuss the possibility of Area X being the incursion of a parallel universe.
-
016: TERROIRS: Control views fragments of video footage from the first
expedition into Area X and is disturbed by imagery which seems to imply
something gigantic consuming the team members just off-camera. Some of the
footage also seems to be from a birds-eye viewpoint.
- 017: PERSPECTIVE: During a staff meeting, Grace tries to humiliate Control by exposing some of Control's failed espionage operations in the past, but Control is more relieved to just get everything out in the open.
- 018: RECOVERY: At a nearby pond, the biologist tells Control that she is not the biologist and that something "bright" is growing inside of her.
HAUNTINGS
- 000: Control dreams of seeing a figure on the cliff above him.
-
020: SECOND RECOVERY: Control realizes that he has been preconditioned by
hypnosis, which is triggered during his conversations with the Voice. After
lashing out and getting drunk, he talks with his mother, who reveals that
the Voice was actually Lowry, the only survivor of the first Area X
expedition and now a powerful figure at "Central" (the organization
overseeing the Southern Reach), and thus deemed best qualified to be his
handler. Control is angered by Lowry's use of hypnosis to manipulate him.
- 021: REPEATING: Control visits the Director's old house and discovers that someone had written the strange sermonizing words in her bedroom after her disappearance.
- 022: GAMBIT: Control tries to shake information about the Director out of Grace, but he loses the gambit when Grace informs him that Ghost Bird has been sent away to Central, and Control's only role now is to organize the missing Director's notes.
- 023: BREAK DOWN: In the storage room frequented by Whitby, Control discovers a hidden trap door leading into a secret room dominated by a phantasmagorical painting featuring distorted animal-caricatures of the Southern Reach staff. He suddenly notices Whitby ensconced in a corner. When Whitby tries to "caress" Control's head, Control leaves the room as calmly as possible. Back at his house in Hedley, he wonders if everyone at the Southern Reach is insane and despairs of learning anything to report.
- 00X: When Control returns to the Southern Reach, he tries and fails to find answers in the Director's old notes. When he heads towards the science division, he finds himself suddenly facing a soft, breathing wall of some sort (the border of Area X).
AFTERLIFE
- Control realizes that Area X's border has been expanding and that it has suddenly now reached the Southern Reach itself. He also sees the Director returning, surrounded by emerald dust and apparently bringing with her Area X as she approaches. Control believes that his disturbance of Whitby's secret painting chamber must have triggered off some kind of beacon to call forth the Director's return. He also realizes that the Director is the lighthouse keeper's daughter (as seen in an old photograph), and that she must have been in Area X sometime before the "Event" creating the zone. Back at Hedley, he finds his mother waiting for him at his house. She tells him that Area X has stopped advancing past the perimeter of the Southern Reach, but two more Area X "incursions" have sprouted at the return points of the anthropologist and surveyor from the 12th expedition. She believes that the purpose of the returnees from the 11th expedition had been to contaminate the Southern Reach itself. She had assigned her son to the Southern Reach because she would know if he had been "changed" in some way. When Control learns that the biologist (Ghost Bird) has escaped custody, he leaves Hedley and sneaks his way north towards Rock Bay, a nature preserve which had once been very meaningful to the biologist. When he finally confronts her, she tells him that, although she is a replica, she is different from the other replicas. She believes that the "brightness" that had been within her is another gateway into Area X, but that brightness has now left her and migrated into the sea. Desperate to find out who she really is, she dives into the sea in an attempt to enter the gate. Control dives in after her.
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| Editura Nemira 2020-21 |
Written from the alternating point of views of the Director, Control, Ghost
Bird (the biologist's doppelganger) and Saul Evans (the lighthouse keeper), Acceptance chronicles the
events leading up to the creation of Area X, the events occurring just before
Annihilation and the events following the ending of Authority.
000X: THE DIRECTOR, TWELFTH EXPEDITION: After the biologist departs the lighthouse, the Director's consciousness rises into the air as her dying body erupts into green flame.
PART I: RANGE LIGHT
-
0001: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: A lighthouse keeper (and former preacher) named
Saul Evans allows Henry and Suzanne, two visitors from the Seance and
Science Brigade (a "crackpot" group based on an island to the north dubbed
"Failure Island"), to conduct strange experiments on his grounds. He also
entertains a young local girl named Gloria who wanders the area. One day,
Saul spots a glinting object of some sort at the center of some plants. The
glinting object somehow embeds itself in Saul's thumb, although he can find
no entry markings. Henry seems suspiciously interested in Saul's welfare.
-
0002: GHOST BIRD: Ghost Bird and Control surface inside Area X just off the
coast of the mainland and make their way to shore. They decide to make the
island north of the lighthouse ("Failure Island") their ultimate goal. A few
days later, they discover a desiccated skeleton, apparently the remains of
the "moaning creature" (psychologist from the 11th expedition), which Ghost
Bird senses still has some consciousness in it.
-
0003: THE DIRECTOR: Frustrated at the lack of progress at the Southern
Reach, the Director decides to visit the well/tower herself, and brings
Whitby along as her only companion. When she descends into the stairwell,
she encounters an altered Saul Evans (whom she remembers from her
childhood), who seems to be in a "dormant" state. However, a light from
below begins flooding upwards and Evans begins changing. The Director and
Whitby flee the tunnel.
-
0004: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: Saul notices that a small piece of glass is
missing from his lighthouse lens and suspects Henry and Suzanne (the "Light
Brigade") of being responsible. Gloria and an intern from the village named
Brad arrive and use the lighthouse telescope to observe the remnants of a
fire on Failure Island (at this point in time the northward base of the
Light Brigade and former home of the lighthouse's lens). Henry and Suzanne
takes a picture of Saul, Brad and Gloria (later seen by the biologist and
the Director).
- 0005: CONTROL: Control tries and fails to unravel Ghost Bird's resolve by reminding her that she is a copy. Later, the sky seems to "ripple" and a gigantic force seems to briefly reach for them and then withdraw. Afterwards, a storm erupts which rains down tadpole-like creatures. In the meantime, Control notes that a "brightness" has been growing inside of him.
-
0006: THE DIRECTOR: The Director and Whitby visit the village, which is
actually the Director's parents' old home. She finds no sign of her mother
there.
-
0007: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: A week after his encounter with the splinter of
light, Saul begins to feel a sense of disassociation with his body. He then
has an apocalyptic dream that a homeless "God" from beyond wants to make a
death-strewn Earth his new kingdom, and sees himself descending into a
subterranean lighthouse writing sermon-like words on the stairwell wall.
-
0008: GHOST BIRD: Ghost Bird and Control reach the coast where they see find
the remains of a military force, destroyed by some great force from the sea.
They then take a rowboat to Failure Island and seek refuge at its old
lighthouse, where they are surprised to discover Grace, the assistant
director of the Southern Reach.
-
0009: THE DIRECTOR: At the lighthouse, Whitby encounters a double of himself
and the two figures fight in the journal room. One of them is killed, but
the Director is not sure whether the survivor is the "real" Whitby or his
double. The surviving Whitby points out a strange plant and a damaged
cellphone in the dead Whitby's backpack. After they return to the Southern
Reach, the Director is interrogated by Lowry and Jackie Severance (Control's
mother) at Central, but she tells them nothing unusual happened on her
trip.
-
0010: CONTROL: Control learns that when Area X had consumed the Southern
Reach, Grace had killed the replica Director and then led her forces to the
lighthouse where they were then torn apart by something from the sea. She
has now been surviving on her own at Failure Island's lighthouse for the
past 3 years (although only 2 weeks have passed for Control and Ghost Bird).
She then shows them the biologist's last remaining notes.
PART II: FIXED LIGHT
-
The biologist states that after many years, the brightness will soon
overtake her, but she wishes to chronicle her story before the end.
-
01: THE BRIGHTNESS: As the biologist makes her way through an increasingly
hallucinogenic landscape towards the northern island in search of her
husband, she tries to resist the brightness which is seemingly taking over
her body.
-
02: THE MOANING CREATURE: The biologist again encounters the moaning
creature (the psychologist from the 11th expedition now transformed into a
slug-like monstrosity) and fears that the brightness infecting her might
turn her into something similar.
-
03: THE ISLAND: The biologist reaches the island and makes its old
lighthouse her base camp. Her initial explorations turn up nothing
unusual.
-
04: THE OWL: She soon discovers the remnants of a previous visitor's
campsite, and when an owl befriends her in a strange way, she wonders if the
owl might be her husband now transformed.
-
05: THE SEEKER & SURVEILLANCE BANDITS: On the island, the biologist
discovers notes from an organization named "S&SB", which she theorizes
might stand for "Seeker and Surveillance Bandits". The S&SB notes seem
to hint that something has been "found", and that the area might have had
unusual properties even before the appearance of Area X.
- 06: THE PASSAGE OF TIME, AND PAIN: 30 years pass, during which time the biologist manages to fend off the brightness trying to consume her by repeatedly inducing pain on herself. During this time she also notices that the night sky periodically exhibits strange transformations evoking an alien sky. After her companion owl finally dies, the biologist decides to stop fighting the brightness and wonders how dramatic her transformation will be.
|
| Fourth Estate 2018 |
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0011: GHOST BIRD: The biologist's notes and Grace's observations suggest
that Area X is not on Earth and that some unknown phenomena causes time to
pass at different speeds here. Some time later, the biologist appears, now
transformed into a massive, fluidic amphibious being with hundreds of eyes.
Ghost Bird senses that this grossly-transformed biologist can apparently
"transition" from one remote place to another (and exist in both at the same
time). When the creature attacks the lighthouse, Control and Grace flee.
Ghost Bird however touches the massive bulk with her hands, during which
time she sees herself through the seemingly "beautiful" creature's eyes.
-
0012: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: One night, Saul catches Henry, Suzanne and an
unknown "officious" woman (Jackie Severence) interfering with the lantern.
After Suzanne and the woman leave, Henry tells Saul that he was the one who
had drilled a hole in the lantern lens to find something strange "in there",
and hints that the "catalyst" had existed in this haunted area even before
their arrival.
-
0013: CONTROL: The leviathan-form of the biologist examines Control and then
departs back into the sea. Grace tells Control and Ghost Bird that a
creature like this had destroyed her military forces back at the mainland
lighthouse. They decide to try and escape Area X by returning to the
mainland and confronting the Crawler inside the well-tower.
-
0014: THE DIRECTOR: After the Director returns to the Southern Reach, she
sends out an 11th expedition, whose members return as mind-wiped zombies.
Frustrated, she paints the words from the well-tower on a hidden wall in her
office, while trying to reassure Grace that she has a plan of some sort.
-
0015: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: Saul has a vision in which some kind of "star"
(with an 8-leaved plant in its center) falls from the sky and lands off the
coast. The impact causes life in the area to become "different". Later,
Gloria tells Saul that she will be away with her mother for a couple months.
Saul asks her not to forget him.
-
0016: GHOST BIRD: As Ghost Bird, Control and Grace make their way to the
mainland and then reach the lighthouse, Grace theorizes that the border gate
into Area X takes visitors into an Area X displaced to another world, while
entering the border through any other area results in the visitor entering
the unknown area "replaced" by Area X, now transplanted to Earth. Ghost Bird
recalls that while moving through the border gate, travelers can glimpse a
desolate post-apocalyptic landscape beyond the perimeter walls of the gate
corridor.
-
0017: THE DIRECTOR: Whitby tells the Director that the plant they had
retrieved from the lighthouse (and which refuses to die) had briefly bloomed
into an 8-leaved flower (after an hour the flower had then disintegrated).
Whitby also cares for a small mouse, which he keeps in his "attic". Now, 2
years since her secret expedition into Area X with Whitby, the Director
chooses the biologist for the 12th expedition. She hopes the biologist's
"anti-social" nature will allow her to more easily attune herself to the
region's alien forces.
-
0018: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: Although weird sermon-like sentences continue
to interrupt Saul's thoughts, he begins to feel more "normal". However, when
he encounters Henry staring at him in a bar, a strange sense of vertigo
overtakes him and his feeling of "otherness" returns.
-
0019: CONTROL: As the brightness in Control continues to grow, he and Ghost
Bird descend into the well-tower while Grace guards the entrance on the
surface.
-
0020: THE DIRECTOR: The Director learns that she will soon die of ovarian
cancer and decides to include herself on the 12th expedition with the
biologist. She also learns that Central (under the leadership of Jackie
Severence's father) at one point had funded the Seance & Science
Brigade, connecting Central to the creation of Area X.
-
0021: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: After most of the patrons of the bar leave
(including Henry), Saul becomes strangely ravenous. In a little while his
senses become heightened and distorted, and something seems to "emanate"
from him. The remaining bar patrons begin to go insane and become
injured.
-
0022: GHOST BIRD: When Ghost Bird sees the writing on the stairwell wall,
she believes that the reason she is "different" from the other duplicate
returnees is because the biologist had inhaled some of the spores from the
wall when she had first descended. When she and Control finally reach the
Crawler (now manifested as a bell-shaped gelatinous creature with a single
arm still writing words on the wall), a floating sphere attached to the
Crawler pierces Ghost Bird with a light. She then learns that long ago an
alien planet had once been destroyed by a swarm of meteorites. An artificial
being created by the planet's natives is also shattered during this
incident, but one of its constituent parts floats through space and
eventually reaches Earth, winding up embedded in the lens of a lighthouse
crystal. Once the creature had been awakened, it had begun an automatic
function: to consume its environment. During this vision, Grace suddenly
appears and tries to shoot the Crawler, but the bullet hits Ghost Bird
instead and Grace flees back to the surface. Ghost Bird then notices that
Control has continued down the stairs in order to reach the white door at
the bottom.
-
0023: THE DIRECTOR: The Director visits Central and confronts Lowry with the
damaged cellphone retrieved from her expedition with Whitby. He eventually
admits that it is his, left behind during the first expedition. The Director
wonders of Lowry has been compromised by Area X and implies that the
cellphone is proof of Lowry's contact with an unknown intelligence. Lowry
becomes unsettled when the Director suggests that Area X may come looking
for him. Lowry also denies that the S&SB had been involved with the
creation of Area X, but the Director doesn't believe him.
-
0024: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: Shaken by the bloody scene at the bar, Saul
makes his way to the lighthouse and climbs a seemingly "organic" stairwell
up to the lantern room. A strange light from the basement of the lantern
room pours up from an 8-leaved blossom sitting on top of a pile of
notebooks. When Saul falls into the chamber, the notebooks disappear but he
finds the bodies of Henry and Suzanne. When he emerges from the trap door
another Henry tries to shoot him as well, and the two of them somehow fall
over the railing to land far below.
-
0025: CONTROL: As Control descends the well-tower stairs, he transforms into
something not quite human (possibly a rabbit like the ones once used by the
Southern Reach in their attempt to "overload" the border). At the bottom, he
leaps into the bright light, now shaped like the undying plant.
-
0026: THE DIRECTOR: At her house, the Director thinks that Lowry's damaged
cellphone may be crawling around her kitchen floor. She destroys all of her
notes at home, but brings the cellphone to her office.
-
0027: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER: Some force allows Saul to land gently on the
ground, but he realizes that he is changing. He flees into the forest, but
eventually succumbs and makes his final transformation.
- 0028: GHOST BIRD: After Control leaps into the bright light, a small earthquake erupts and the well-tower becomes "inert". Ghost Bird and Grace decide to see what has happened to the outside world, and end up using stones thrown ahead of them to try and detect if an invisible border still exists outside Area X.
|
| Droemer Knaur 2017 |
A History of Area X
Although the author has stated that his intent is to present a phenomenon
beyond mankind's ability to explain or understand, below is a possible
history of Area X, based on some cherry-picked
theories proposed by the characters in the books.
Some time in the distant past, a swarm of meteors strikes the surface of an alien planet and causes the destruction of an artificial organism created by the planet's natives. A shard of this organism is ejected out into space and eventually lands on Earth. Later, the shard is dug up by humans and finds itself embedded in the lens of a lighthouse crystal. The island upon which the lighthouse is stationed, Failure Island, becomes known for sightings of strange phenomena, caused by the presence of the alien shard.
A group of amateur scientists and psychic sleuths named the "Seance & Science Brigade" establish themselves on Failure Island to investigate the strange reports emanating from the region. During this time, a government intelligence agency named "Central" (CIA?) decides to help support the S&SB, mostly in order to keep an eye on their activities. Eventually, a new lighthouse is built on the mainland, and the lens of Failure Island's lighthouse is transferred to the mainland lighthouse. Henry and Suzanne, two members of the S&SB, survey the area and deduce that the source of the strange phenomena they have been investigating has relocated to the mainland, as their instruments detect an anomaly in the new lighthouse's transplanted lens.
When they extract the shard from the lighthouse lens, it lands on the ground below, where the lighthouse keeper, Saul Evans, accidentally becomes exposed to it. Evans' consciousness and physical state is slowly consumed by the shard, which acts like an expanding virus. The shard eventually reaches a tipping point where it begins expanding into a region later dubbed "Area X". As the perimeter of the shard's influence expands, the interior is transported to the shard's home planet, while portions of an alien landscape are exchanged to occupy the space displaced on Earth. Thus, from within Area X, an alien night sky can be seen.
As Evans makes his final transformation into a creature under the shard's influence, he manages to use his will-power to slow and nearly halt the advance of Area X's expansion. He is also able to create a passageway by which humans on Earth can reach the interior of Area X. Any attempt to breach the perimeter of Area X outside of the passageway results in the interloper walking into the alien landscape now transposed to Earth, never to be heard from again.
Although the S&SB is lost during the sudden expansion of Area X, Central establishes the Southern Reach, a research base just outside of the perimeter. As the first expedition into Area X conducts their investigation, their technology begins to fail, as Area X begins to "hack" their comparatively simple gear. Only one man, James Lowry, survives this first expedition, and he eventually returns to Central to spearhead the Southern Reach's further efforts at penetrating the strange region.
As the expeditions continue, Area X begins mutating its visitors and creating doppelgangers of them. Seeking to expand beyond the limits imposed by Saul Evans (who now exists as a creature who scribbles apocalyptic warning sermons on the stairwell of an "underground lighthouse" made out of his own mutated body), Area X begins sending back doppelgangers to the outside world so that they can "seed" new iterations of Area X on Earth.
Ultimately, a Central agent named "Control" allies himself with a "rebel"
doppelganger (imperfect due to its original host's accidental exposure to the
flora of Area X) and descends into Evans' underground lighthouse. There, he
leaps into the "heart" of Area X and seemingly overloads it, and possibly defusing the
power causing Area X.
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| Editura Trei 2014-16 |
ANNIHILATION Wiki Entry
AUTHORITY Wiki Entry
ACCEPTANCE Wiki Entry
The Southern Reach plot + timeline explained (Jennie Chen)
