Paperback, 256 pages
chinese language
Published by 天地出版社.
四位女性被派遣前往边界外勘察。这是一片荒芜了多年、被称为“X区域”的神秘地带，她们已经是政府派遣出的第十二支勘探队，以往的勘探队均以失败告终。在探险的过程中，女主角发现自己一直在被欺骗和误导，身处危险与谎言之中。 “遗落的南境”The Southern Reach是一个秘密政府组织，负责派遣探险队穿越国界去一个被命为“X区”的地方进行监测。三十年来前，在这个无人小岛“X区”发生了一件被政府封锁消息的意外事件，当时的探险队员有些离奇消失，幸存的队员返国后则是丧失心智成了行尸走肉。 最新被派往“X区”的第十二支探险队由四位不同领域的女性专家组成，其中有心理学家、人类学家、勘测员与生物学家。由于任务机密，她们的名字不被透露。其中心理学家是领队，她具有催眠人类的能力。 她们没有任何对外的通讯器材，但有自卫的枪支。在基地附近有一个地道，下了地道后，她们发现地道墙面上突出的菌类像是雕刻成文字的圣经箴言。生物学家不小心吸进了通道里的细小孢子，后来她才发现这些孢子让她的身体散发光芒，像是具有了特殊的超能力。 随着探险的进行，队员开始产生争执，关系日益紧张。后来，人类学家离奇消失，其他三人后来发现她死于一座会排出绿色灰烬的高塔。接着心理学家也消失了。主角生物学家抛下颇具敌意的勘测员，独自到岛上其它地方探险。她怀着恐惧攀爬上灯塔，想要追查杀人凶手。 像所有的科学家一样，女主角生物学家有一股驱使她分析万物了解其运作奥秘的好奇心，这也是她的热情所在。她对于科学的执着研究导致婚姻触礁，她的军医丈夫先前也参与了前往“X区”的探险，但后来返家后成了行尸走肉。 到底是谁杀了人类学家？生物学家从人类学家的尸体上采样，发现是奇怪的脑细胞。这个细胞有机体遇到人类时会瞬间侵入造成人类心智丧失，生物学家匿称这个有机体是“爬行者”。
Couldn't put this one down once I picked it up. Saw the movie first, which shares some key details in common but otherwise feels like a different story being told in a similar alternate universe. It strikes a perfect balance between narrative, prose, and philosophy. You know the mission is doomed from page one but you can't look away. I can't wait to finish the trilogy.
Ah, so that's what it feels like to find a book that was written specifically for me.
I'll preface this with the fact that I did see the movie (god, has it really been five years already?) before reading the book, but my fears of being spoiled ended up being unfounded because beyond the setting and loose cast of characters, there's barely any crossover between the two. They may as well be two separate works of fiction, but luckily for me I ended up loving both of them.
This was a weird book, but not in a way that left me frustrated. The setting itself is a central mystery, but several other interrelated mysteries swirl around it, and not everything (not even the majority) is answered. But because everything is relayed second-hand through - honestly - one of the most interesting protagonists I've ever read, you're so detached from things …
Ah, so that's what it feels like to find a book that was written specifically for me.
I'll preface this with the fact that I did see the movie (god, has it really been five years already?) before reading the book, but my fears of being spoiled ended up being unfounded because beyond the setting and loose cast of characters, there's barely any crossover between the two. They may as well be two separate works of fiction, but luckily for me I ended up loving both of them.
This was a weird book, but not in a way that left me frustrated. The setting itself is a central mystery, but several other interrelated mysteries swirl around it, and not everything (not even the majority) is answered. But because everything is relayed second-hand through - honestly - one of the most interesting protagonists I've ever read, you're so detached from things that it's not really about what's happening, but more about how people react in these situations. Yes there's dramatic action and tension and conflict, but there's also this lens of separation that obscures and lessens everything. Like you're observing a life-or-death struggle of some small creatures under the surface of a pond.
It's also an intensely lonely book. There are long stretches of exposition, and even when the multiple consecutive scenes depicting the protagonist alone are interspersed with her flashbacks, there just is not a lot of dialogue going on here. Normally that's a recipe for waning interest for me, but I was fully engaged here throughout. She had such an interesting mind and personality to delve into that I felt like I was learning about an actual person.
The worldbuilding is also fantastic and is so rich for additional stories to tell. I don't usually go for series, but I'm really gonna try to finish this trilogy if the first book has me so enamored.
This is one of those books where it's kind of frustrating to write a review because I know I'm not doing it justice. I just know that I've never read anything like this and I'm craving more.
This is probably my preferred flavour of sci-fi - concise and straight to the point, with an interesting concept at the core. It feels premature to review it while I'm still reading the trilogy (currently half way through Authority).
The movie and the book are both interesting, although they are different enough that I'd say the movie is "based on the back cover of the book". The unreliable narrator and weirdly disorienting story telling makes it a challenge to piece out what (if anything) is real while reading, which is can be an enjoyable experience for some readers.
Also the workplace dynamics of the Southern Reach office is really suboptimal. HR should probably get involved.
One of the most emotionally impactful books I've read, ever. Several times I had to put it down for a moment and just let the feelings it had dug up find their way through my brain to process.
Tense and disorienting
I enjoyed the oppressive tone and writing style. Not a book for those who want sharp focussed action. Would have rated it higher my was put off by commenters elsewhere who thought the Novel was the second coming and couldn’t exist alongside the movie.
it's the journal of a biologist exploring an area where things are Wrong and Strange. if that sounds like an enjoyable read to you it probably will be
Incredibly gripping. I loved the mysterious worldbuilding and the obscure narration along with it. The main character felt whole and deeply explored.
Four women take an expedition into an uninhabited region cut off for decades as it returns to nature; Area X. The region warps their reality as they try to get to the bottom of the mysterious influence taking over the area, distorting time and perception.
ANNHILATION is built on twin pillars of grief and uncertainty, as the biologist of a four-woman expedition into a strange land begins to mistrust her present she tries to reassess her past.
There are many obvious analogies to draw in the way the biologist's ruminations on her history are driven by her attempts to analyze her increasingly disturbing present. For me they land in this strange middle zone of, on the one hand, being fairly obvious comparisons to draw in a novel and thus feeling a bit boring, and on the other hand they completely make sense for the character to have pondered and journaled in this situation. They're so perfectly fitting that it seems obvious, but nevertheless I was rarely bored.
I ended the book feeling like I knew a great deal about the biologist (but never her name), and not very much about Area X itself. What she …
I find this book to be incredibly beautiful for some reason. It's about a woman who's disconnected from her own experience and so finds purpose in this intimidating, preternatural space. It's also about how words structure and take away meaning. And I think it's secretly also about climate trauma. It's a weird mix that exploits strange and primal fears inside of me.
1) "Our mission was simple: to continue the government's investigation into the mysteries of Area X, slowly working our way out from base camp.
The expedition could last days, months, or even years, depending on various stimuli and conditions. We had supplies with us for six months, and another two years' worth of supplies had already been stored at the base camp. We had also been assured that it was safe to live off the land if necessary. All of our foodstuffs were smoked or canned or in packets. Our most outlandish equipment consisted of a measuring device that had been issued to each of us, which hung from a strap on our belts: a small rectangle of black metal with a glass-covered hole in the middle. If the hole glowed red, we had thirty minutes to remove ourselves to 'a safe place.' We were not told what the device …
1) "Our mission was simple: to continue the government's investigation into the mysteries of Area X, slowly working our way out from base camp.
The expedition could last days, months, or even years, depending on various stimuli and conditions. We had supplies with us for six months, and another two years' worth of supplies had already been stored at the base camp. We had also been assured that it was safe to live off the land if necessary. All of our foodstuffs were smoked or canned or in packets. Our most outlandish equipment consisted of a measuring device that had been issued to each of us, which hung from a strap on our belts: a small rectangle of black metal with a glass-covered hole in the middle. If the hole glowed red, we had thirty minutes to remove ourselves to 'a safe place.' We were not told what the device measured or why we should be afraid should it glow red. After the first few hours, I had grown so used to it that I hadn't looked at it again. We had been forbidden watches and compasses."
2) "The deserted village had so sunk into the natural landscape of the coast that I did not see it until I was upon it. The trail dipped into a depression of sorts, and there lay the village, fringed by more stunted trees. Only a few roofs remained on the twelve or thirteen houses, and the trail through had crumbled into porous rubble. Some outer walls still stood, dark rotting wood splotched with lichen, but for the most part these walls had fallen away and left me with a peculiar glimpse of the interiors: the remains of chairs and tables, a child's toys, rotted clothing, ceiling beams brought to earth, covered in moss and vines. There was a sharp smell of chemicals in that place, and more than one dead animal, decomposing into the mulch. Some of the houses had, over time, slid into the canal to the left and looked in their skeletal remains like creatures struggling to leave the water. It all seemed like something that had happened a century ago, and what was left were just vague recollections of the event.
But in what had been kitchens or living rooms or bedrooms, I also saw a few peculiar eruptions of moss or lichen, rising four, five, feet tall, misshapen, the vegetative matter forming an approximation of limbs and heads and torsos. As if there had been runoff from the material, too heavy for gravity, that had congregated at the foot of these objects. Or perhaps I imagined this effect."
3) "'Ghost bird, do you love me?' he whispered once in the dark, before he left for his expedition training, even though he was the ghost. 'Ghost bird, do you need me?' I loved him, but I didn't need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. A ghost bird might be a hawk in one place, a crow in another, depending on the context. The sparrow that shot up into the blue sky one morning might transform mid-flight into an osprey the next. This was the way of things here. There were no reasons so mighty that they could override the desire to be in accord with the tides and the passage of seasons and the rhythms underlying everything around me."
4) "It was later than I had thought when I emerged from below, the sky taking on the deep amber hue that marked the beginning of late afternoon. The sea was ablaze with light, but nothing beautiful here fooled me anymore. Human lives had poured into this place over time, volunteered to become party to exile and worse. Under everything lay the ghastly presence of countless desperate struggles. Why did they keep sending us? Why did we keep going? So many lies, so little ability to face the truth. Area X broke minds, I felt, even though it hadn't yet broken mine. A line from a song kept coming back to me: All this useless knowledge."
5) "But the longer I stared at it, the less comprehensible the creature became. The more it became something alien to me, and the more I had a sense that I knew nothing at all about nature, about ecosystems. There was something about my mood and its dark glow that eclipsed sense, that made me see this creature, which had indeed been assigned a place in the taxonomy—catalogued, studied, and described—irreducible down to any of that. And if I kept looking, I knew that ultimately I would have to admit I knew less than nothing about myself as well, whether that was a lie or the truth.
When I finally wrenched my gaze from the starfish and stood again, I could not tell where the sky met the sea, whether I faced the water or the shore. I was completely adrift, and dislocated, and all I had to navigate by in that moment was the glowing beacon below me."
6) "I do not know how this thorn got here or from how far away it came, but by luck or fate or design at some point it found the lighthouse keeper and did not let him go. How long he had as it remade him, repurposed him, is a mystery. There was no one to observe, to bear witness—until thirty years later a biologist catches a glimpse of him and speculates on what he might have become. Catalyst. Spark. Engine. The grit that made the pearl? Or merely an unwilling passenger?
And after his fate was determined ... imagine the expeditions—twelve or fifty or a hundred, it doesn't matter—that keep coming into contact with that entity or entities, that keep becoming fodder and becoming remade. These expeditions that come here at a hidden entry point along a mysterious border, an entry point that (perhaps) is mirrored within the deepest depths of the Tower. Imagine these expeditions, and then recognize that they all still exist in Area X in some form, even the ones that came back, especially the ones that came back: layered over one another, communicating in whatever way is left to them. Imagine that this communication sometimes lends a sense of the uncanny to the landscape because of the narcissism of our human gaze, but that it is just part of the natural world here."
That was a very fast read. I got this book because I've always been curious about the movie. Now that I've finished the book, I'm going to watch the film and see how (or if) they pulled this off.
Obviously, by the speed with which I devoured this book, it got under my skin. One mystery after another, with a nameless protagonist and her nameless peers, all in a setting that evokes Cthulu but never expressly lays it out (and that's a good thing.) I look forward to unraveling more of Southern Reach.
But for now, I'm starting up the movie.
2 hours later
Wow. Glad I read the book first.
I really enjoyed this book! I am honestly a little surprised at how many people found it boring, but I was quickly wrapped up in the world and enamoured by our narrator's priorities changed and her detailed descriptions of the environment.
Perhaps the writing was a bit dry for some, but I found it on par with H.P. Lovecraft; although far less racist (so infinitely better than Lovecraft).
