The complexity of Southern Reach Trilogy (and Area X) Jeff VanderMeer: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance
The complexity of Southern Reach Trilogy (and Area X) Jeff VanderMeer: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance

Summary/Abstract: Analyses of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation testify that the work, operating with many perplexing effects, puts the acts of coherent meaning formation to the test, and the sequels further exacerbate this productive uncertainty. Our study attempts to show that VanderMeer’s text should be read slightly differently than classic science fiction adventure novels. The reception of popular literature and science fiction has traditionally become a scheme following the renouncing of the combination. However, the works of VanderMeer and many writers of similar calibre (e.g., Iain M. Banks, Wil¬liam Gibson, China Miéville, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons) warn that this ha¬bituation can be overcome, dismantled, and transformed. The modern and postmod¬ern differentiation of science fiction has no regard for maintaining the aesthetic place of literature; it speaks of zones and spaces that contribute more to the interdisciplinary and intermedia relativisation of human centres. We should, therefore, reflect on the reading for preliminary genre codes (or value preferences). In the Southern Reach Trilogy case, no normative background can be created that would not conflict with the function of a specific element of the story. Along with this type of fragmentation, the non-human and material dimensions confront us with the fact that incomprehensibility is not a lack of value but a consequence of mixing (our) world with foreign elements. The above also means that to describe the stratification of the VanderMeer trilogy, on the one hand, the category of popular literature may prove to be scarce, and on the other hand, the reading technique may function as data management in which the fiction-creating act of combination can make further and more transpositions of the text. Due to this hybridising dynamics, VanderMeer combines the Lovecraftian horror of culture and the posthumanism of modern biological science fiction so that while the story remains flawed, the mosaic effect generates eco-level issues in the face of alienation. This process, which can be grasped along complexity, can be evaluated as one of the essential new weird fiction features.

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