There are a few months left in 2014, but I’m calling it now: When all is said and done, the publication of the Southern Reach Trilogy—Jeff VanderMeer’s three-volume mindfuck of a sci-fi story—will be the publishing event of the year.
I just finished the trilogy last night, and I’m still trying to pick up bits of gray matter off the floor. At this point, I’m too blown away and perplexed by the whole thing to really offer a coherent review. So instead, here are some of the reasons why the Southern Reach Trilogy is the publishing event of the year—and why you should read it right NOW:
• First of all, there’s the unique method of its publication. Each of the three volumes of the Southern Reach Trilogy was published in 2014; a unique model for the publishing biz, which generally releases titles in a series over a span of years. FSG’s method in releasing the series is to the rest of publishing what the Netflix model is to broadcast TV: they’re giving it to you all at once, for easy binging. And binge it you will. I know I did.
• The bizarro premise: in some unspecified future (or alternate present/past?), there is a part of North America that by some mysterious agency or process becomes a place of strange phenomena, Area X. Humans are expelled or killed, and a border comes down, a cosmic limit that nothing can traverse except through a single portal. A government organization called the Southern Reach is set up to investigate Area X, under the control of a mysterious and malevolent agency known only as Central. The Southern Reach sends expeditions into Area X, and those who return describe an area of pristine, beautiful wilderness—yet the landscape seems to contain a kind of malevolent sentience, and many of the expeditioneers are lost to violence, sickness, and a madness that creeps inexorably into the workings of the Southern Reach and the outside world.
• The prose. It’s hypnotic. Also a little challenging. More than once I got caught up in the cadence of the words and then stopped myself and thought—wait, what just happened? I suppose you could call the prose Lovecraftian. More than once I thought of Don DeLillo, the way that complex concepts were woven into the descriptions, the way the dialogue revealed and concealed at the same time. But ultimately, it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before.
• The trilogy is unclassifiable. That gets said a lot, but it’s really true this time. Is The Southern Reach Trilogy science fiction? Fantasy? Horror? All of those, and also: a story of institutional evil, of bureaucratic rot, a meditation on the implacable wildness of nature, on humans’ desire to create systems around things we can never know, to tame the infinite, to control the world and each other, and a woo-woo-what-the-fuck-is-going-on tale that had me thinking of The X-Files and Lost at once.
• About Lost: Yes, it’s kind of like Lost. Except ultimately satisfying. In The Southern Reach Trilogy, mysteries are answered. And also, not? What Jeff VanderMeer has managed to do in these three books is to gesture toward incomprehensible mysteries, to weave together an atmosphere of menace and portent—and then to deliver on this implicit promise with partial answers that suggest intention and design but that don’t ultimately dispel the aura of mystery. How’d he do that?
• Not everyone will like it. It’s difficult. Cerebral. There are stretches where not a lot happens. Other parts where a lot happens but you barely know what’s going on, or if any of it’s real. It’ll inspire fierce responses. Debates. People taking sides, arguing for or against. We’ll be talking about the Southern Reach Trilogy for a while, I think.
• But most of all: there’s something miraculous about the Southern Reach Trilogy. I fear I’m overselling it, but I actually thought that several times as I was reading: this is miraculous. The fact that three books this odd, this singular, this difficult and impenetrable and fascinating and alluring could be written, and find a publisher suited for them, and make their way out into the world and find an enthusiastic audience, is a minor miracle. And ultimately, whether you end up loving the trilogy or hating it, that’s something to celebrate.
