Annihilation: (10th Anniversary Edition): The bestselling first science fiction novel in the now-classic Southern Reach Series: Book 1 (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

by JeffVanderMeer (Author), Jeff Vandermeer (Author)

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The first volume of the extraordinary Southern Reach trilogy. 'Creepy and fascinating' Stephen King. Welcome to Area X. An Edenic wilderness, an environmental disaster zone, a mystery for thirty years. For thirty years, Area X, monitored by the secret agency known as the Southern Reach, has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border- an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness. Eleven expeditions have been sent in to investigate; even for those that have made it out alive, there have been terrible consequences. 'Annihilation' is the story of the twelfth expedition and is told by its nameless biologist. Introverted but highly intelligent, the biologist brings her own secrets with her. She is accompanied by a psychologist, an anthropologist and a surveyor, their stated mission: to chart the land, take samples and expand the Southern Reach's understanding of Area X. But they soon find out that they are being manipulated by forces both strange and all too familiar. An unmapped tunnel is not as it first appears. An inexplicable moaning calls in the distance at dusk. And while each member of the expedition has surrendered to the authority of the Southern Reach, the power of Area X is far more difficult to resist. 'Annihilation' is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, which will be published throughout 2014: volume two ('Authority') in May, and volume three ('Acceptance') in September 2014.

Synopsis

The first volume of the extraordinary Southern Reach trilogy. 'Creepy and fascinating' Stephen King. Welcome to Area X. An Edenic wilderness, an environmental disaster zone, a mystery for thirty years. For thirty years, Area X, monitored by the secret agency known as the Southern Reach, has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border- an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness. Eleven expeditions have been sent in to investigate; even for those that have made it out alive, there have been terrible consequences. 'Annihilation' is the story of the twelfth expedition and is told by its nameless biologist. Introverted but highly intelligent, the biologist brings her own secrets with her. She is accompanied by a psychologist, an anthropologist and a surveyor, their stated mission: to chart the land, take samples and expand the Southern Reach's understanding of Area X. But they soon find out that they are being manipulated by forces both strange and all too familiar. An unmapped tunnel is not as it first appears. An inexplicable moaning calls in the distance at dusk. And while each member of the expedition has surrendered to the authority of the Southern Reach, the power of Area X is far more difficult to resist. 'Annihilation' is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, which will be published throughout 2014: volume two ('Authority') in May, and volume three ('Acceptance') in September 2014.

$11.63

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: paperback
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published:
ISBN 10: 0008139105
ISBN 13: 9780008139100

Media Reviews

Praise for ANNIHILATION and the SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY:

`I'm loving the Southern Reach Trilogy ... Creepy and fascinating' Stephen King

`Hauntingly weird and brilliantly new ... These are contemporary masterpieces and career-defining novels' Adam Robert, Books of the Year, Guardian

`This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece ... Remarkable ... Tense, eerie and unsettling ... VanderMeer writes much better prose than Poe ever did ... This is genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived' Guardian

`A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike ... Annihilation shows signs of being the novel that will allow VanderMeer to break through to a new and larger audience' Sunday Telegraph

`A lasting monument to the uncanny ... You find yourself afraid to turn the page' Guardian

`VanderMeer's novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease' Financial Times

`What a haunting book this is, lodging deep in the memory in similar fashion to otherworldly classics such as David Lindsay's A Voyage To Arcturus ... Annihilation is so disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it' Daily Mail

`Astonishing, frightening, spectacular ... I hope the trilogy will come to be seen not only as the instant sci-fi classic it is, but also as Literature' New Statesman

`Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel ... A major work' ***** SFX Magazine

`A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards. I loved it' Lauren Beukes

`Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent' Warren Ellis

Author Bio

Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America's American Fantastic Tales and in multiple year's-best anthologies. He writes non-fiction for the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian, among others. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife.