Trust no one and trust nothing that you are told as everything may be a lie. That appears to be the theme of the three novels making up the Area X trilogy, Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance.
According to the first novel, Area X is an area of wilderness, possibly near a military base, that suddenly appeared some thirty years. Or not. This novel is told from the first person of the biologist, no names are given per Area X Authority policy, who relates the story of the twelfth mission which also consists of an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist. In a terse one hundred and thirty pages, she tells of the disastrous outcome of that mission which apparently ends with everyone dead — some by the hands of other mission members, some by their own actions, and some apparently by something mysterious and hostile to humans.
We also get told, if we’re to believe the narrative by the biologist, that Area X is far older than what the Southern Reach authoritu says it is and just how many missions have been sent to figure what it is also a lie. Ok do you remember The Prisoner series where they stripped away the identity of the secret agent and gave him a number? The Authority, or someone else perhaps, stripped away the identities of this group, psychologically conditions to blind obedience to the Authority, and even makes them paranoid towards the other team members . And if we believe the biologist, all of the groups were treated the same.
Got that? Authority quickly negates almost everything that the biologist told us that happened in Annihilation as we’re told that all save the psychologist are alive as they’re being interrogated by The Authority. Mind you they’re being treated as hostiles by having their heads shaved and dressed in clothes suitable to prisoners. And we discover that the psychologist was not at all what she appeared to be.
We also get strong hints The Southern Reach isn’t the all powerful governmental authority that the biologist thought it was. Again I’m forced to mistrust Control as he named himself who arrives to be the acting Director of what, as he describes it, an authority very much the decline and in disarray. An authority where paranoia is normal for everyone involved and no one is safe from the machinations of fellow workers.
Acceptance details the attempt to send one last mission into Area X to solve the mystery of what Area X. Or so it would seem. I’m not going to detail the final novel beyond saying that there’s a haunted lighthouse story which has its roots in the story told by the biologist, the effects of death, and the experience of being in contact an intelligence far which is in no way what we are. Does it wrap up the Area X story neatly? Of course not. Vandermeer may likely make you say ‘What the fuck?’
(FSG, 2014)
