area x
& the southern reach trilogy
welcome!
Welcome to our shrine of Area X, including the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer and the movie adaptation Annihilation (2018). Weird things happen to people involved in Area X. We really enjoy the lush descriptions, disappearing and reappearing people, fantastical chimeras, government hypnotists, and impossible genome mutations.
This shrine is separated into four pages, one for each book of the trilogy and then the movie. Each page contains a plot summary, quotes, commentary, and character guide. We try to tag spoilers, but be mindful if you go on the pages for later books.
We've been obsessed with these books and they bring us a lot of joy. If you like weird science fiction that explores isolation, agency, identity, and the relationship people have with the natural world, you'll probably like it!
the words
“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dim lit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.”