After a decade of absence, Jeff VanderMeer returns to Area the first was even adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. starting with Annihilation and culminating with AcceptanceThe books told the story of an abandoned coastal area that had been claimed (and forever changed) by a mysterious phenomenon known as Area x and the secret agency trying to understand and contain it.
The trilogy solidified VanderMeer's particular style of surreal science fiction and environmental activism, and in the intervening years, she has explored similar themes in novels such as carried, dead astronautsand Hummingbird Salamander. But there were questions that always lingered after Acceptance. And although I had been thinking about a possible new Southern Reach book since 2017, it wasn't until 2023 that all the pieces fell into place.
That book would become Absolutiona prequel coming out on October 22. It is divided into three parts and largely follows two characters from the original trilogy: Old Jim, a resident of the abandoned village in Area x, and Lowry, sole survivor of the first expedition to the phenomenon. The book is disturbing, strange, and disturbingly funny (just wait until you meet the carnivorous rabbits).
Before AbsolutionAfter the release, I had the chance to speak with VanderMeer about why he had to return to the Southern Reach saga and how everything came together so quickly.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
you wrote Absolution in six months. How does that compare to your typical writing experience?
I started writing novels later and later, which allows me to think about it more because I'm more relaxed now. I've noticed that the more I think about something, the more fully formed it is on the page when I write it. I had been thinking about Absolution since 2017, and then lightning struck on July 31 of last year. I woke up and had the whole idea in my head: the characters; the interaction of the three sections; how they were going to be written. And I just started writing. I didn't stop until December 31st. It was like having inspiration after inspiration. I wrote morning, noon and night, which is unusual for me. I usually write in the mornings.
I woke up, in a sense, on December 31 and had a final draft: 150,000 words. That was pretty intense. It was exhausting. I kind of put the rest of my life on hold to do it. It was incredibly satisfying. I had barricaded myself against the covid and had not written a novel since Hummingbird Salamander at the end of 2020, so I think I was really ready to write something.
Did you at least take a break after that?
Basically I just didn't do anything. My brain shut down for a couple of weeks. And then I said to my editor, “Well, this novel is finished. I know it's something unexpected. Do you want to try to publish it next year? And he said, “Yes!” That's something I've always been very good at: unusual posting times. We found ways to advance pre-production material so we could do it without cutting corners on quality.
With the Southern Reach trilogy coming out in such quick succession, you didn't have to worry much about the kind of expectations that come with following up a big hit. Here we have a 10-year lawsuit. How do you deal with that?
Honestly, it's been liberating. A lot of people have read this series, which is basically about the ambiguity and unknowability of the universe, and they've completed the story in their heads and really engaged with their imaginations. I had a lot of freedom. I didn't think about the pressure of that. I just felt like I had been given permission to do it. And even when I posted excerpts, the readers who responded were so thoughtful, so positive, and so concerned about my creativity, to the point of not wanting to say anything that would alter what I was writing. They were just excited that there was more. It was this unique situation where it definitely could have been full of pressure, but in fact, it was quite the opposite.
How do you know when the time is right to take one of those gestating ideas and turn it fully into a novel?
It was helpful here that it had this really abrupt and surprising… I don't even know how to describe it. In writing workshops, they want you to answer questions about crafts. And sometimes it's literally: “I had a dream and I followed it.” How do you give advice like that? And how do you talk about that? In terms of the structure of the piece, the fact that Old Jim was a character in some way, shape or form really helped because there is a mystery involving him and Central and as I write, I started writing all three parts at once . And I keep coming and going.
A lot Absolution is meant to make readers feel disoriented. I'm wondering how you think about balancing that feeling while still being understandable.
One thing readers have taught me is to reread these books. So, for example, I saw many reevaluations of Authority and people said they saw the humor in a second reading as they prepared to Absolution. Here, first, I trust the reader, and second, every word counts: every sentence, every paragraph. There isn't a single word in there that isn't intentional. The answers to many things are clear. The disorientation is that by creating a feeling of claustrophobia or discomfort from what is happening, some of that may not come through on the first reading. But I don't really think these books are all that surreal or strange, especially this one, which is more of a fun and strange point of view. But that depends on the readers.
Now that you've written it, do you feel like this is really the end of the series? Are you happy with where you ended up?
I think so. At one point I was debating how I would tell the story next Acceptance. The solution in my subconscious was Absolutionwhich is something that is both a prequel and, sneakily, a sequel and also contiguous to the events of the first three books. That's also what sparked my imagination. This way of doing something that is visceral and lives in the body, which is always very important to me, and that expands the story without answering all the mysteries, which I think would also be a mistake for a series that struggles with the unknowable. .
As for something in the future, it would have to be similarly coated on the tactile side. You watch a series like DuneWhich I love parts of, but as you get to the later books, they become much more abstract and less based on specific details. And while that creates some interesting effects, it also means that a series can run out of air. I never want this to become that. So for now, I think this is the last of Southern Reach.
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Image: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
I read an interview after Hummingbird Salamander It came out where you said you still had two novels you wanted to write. Are you still there where you are?
It's funny because I always mention something and then it doesn't come out with the same chronology. What happened to Hummingbird Salamander It's just that there were several other books that I started, like carriedwhere I started it one year and then finished it five years later. I realize that there is something missing in my own experience of life that I need to get from somewhere else or that I need to live my life for a few years and I get it. Or there is some other question my subconscious is dealing with. I think those books are probably still on the table and probably next.
Again, it's kind of liberating. You write something by hand in a journal, you get 30,000 to 40,000 words, and you feel no obligation to finish it at that point. And then you can revisit it and reimagine it whenever you want, but you still have all this material to work with. I really like that approach, having a lot of things half finished, because it doesn't give me writer's block. I just stick with what is most inspiring and tends to work.
That sounds very stressful.
One attribute of Angela Carter that I admired is that she always tried. I think that's really important. It is very important to always try and not worry about failure. Honestly, if one of these novels, somehow before being typed, I lost it or burned it or something, I would just write something else. I learned to stop worrying about that kind of thing and that has been very helpful in terms of having confidence when writing.
