The Watch - Book Club — 'Annihilation' (Ep. 154)

Episode Date: May 29, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald present their second installment of the Double Down Book Club as they review and discuss ‘Annihilation’ by Jeff VanderMeer (0:30). Later they are joined by VanderMeer himself to talk about the process of creating the Southern Reach trilogy (19:35). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I have an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner. It's Andy Greenwald.

Amen, brother. Happy Memorial Day. I'm not just spitting verses from the good book, brother. Well, it's a good book. Well, it is a good book. I'm talking about annihilation. Jeff Van der Meer's stunning,

opening part of the Southern Reach trilogy, which is the subject of today's Double Down Book Club. Happy Memorial Day. This is exciting. All we ever really wanted to do is have a book club, Chris. I had bigger dreams for myself, but sure. This is where I tap out. I wanted to contribute to the world in some way. I wanted some hers, sour, cream, onion, potato chips for my birthday. You gave me that. And I wanted a book club, and you gave me that.

I think you were worried that I wasn't going to come through for your birthday. You gave me something real. Yeah. I appreciate that. I got Andy some of the finest foods that you can order on the internet. Mana. Yeah. Guys, we're excited to talk about this book.

First of all, again, thank you to everyone who read the book. Yeah, it's super cool that we can just be like, let's read a book together, gang. And also, because of that and because it's a holiday, if you have not yet read Jeff Vandermears' Annihilation, you can just put this pot in the hopper and come back to it when you finish the book. We were going to talk about the book. This book kind of can't be spoiled. We should also say this is a unique book club for us. We've done a couple of these. We are joined today later in the pod by the author of the book.

Jeff Vandermere was kind enough to let us call him at his home in Florida, where he lives underneath the shadow of a haunted, what do you call it? Lighthouse? Lighthouse. Just among his moldering journals. Yeah, I think he has a couple tide pools. No, he's a really cool guy. He talked about the book, and he talked about the adaptation of the book that's being made by Alex Garland.

It's coming out this year. Yeah, and this is another reason why we wanted to get people in front of this book, because I think this movie is going to be something we're going to be talking about. A lot of people are going to be talking about. It was interesting to hear from Jeff that I think any author who has his or her book adapted for the big screen goes through some version of this, but it does sound like the book is the book, the movie's going to be the movie. They both sound dope. But they both sound dope in their own ways.

I can't remember why I read this book, if it was you or if it was that I heard that it was being made in the movie. Because I have a very annoying habit of whenever I find it. find out that something is like going to be a BBC series or the Cohen brothers are going to make it. I'm like, I got to read that so that I can act like I knew about it first. I think it was me. And here, let me tell you why. Let me tell you the origin story of how this book ended up in our hands. Okay.

I was in one of my favorite bookstores in New York, Three Lives Bookshop in the West Village. God, I hope so. I just, I'm scared to look, honestly, because book court closed. All the good bookstores are closing. Partners in Crime Close. And so I was just, it did? And I was going through the shelves. and I saw three beautiful little paperbacks

in these bright day glow colors, and I found it really compelling. And first of all, let me just say this to you. I judge books by their covers. Yeah, of course. I think everyone should. Yeah. And what was interesting about this

is that Vandermeer wrote a trilogy, the Southern Reach trilogy. What FSG as publisher did was very cool. They took all three of the Southern Reach trilogy books, Annihilation that we're talking about today, authority and acceptance, and they published them in 2014 just a couple months apart. And I have to say,

There was something, maybe this is the TV fan in me, but there was something really appealing about seeing that there was a complete world and a complete vision there for the taking. That it wasn't going to be a situation like The Passage, which is another book that you and I feel hard for, and we should talk about at some point, where as exciting as it was to read the first one, there were years between the first and second and second and third.

Now, all respect to authors who take time to do stuff, but Vandermere churned this out, and here it was. So it was kind of cool to know that I was going on a journey and that it was laid out for me. I read Annihilation on one plane flight from L.A. to New York during after the throne season last year, and it really did my head in. This is not the kind of book that you and I usually read. We love genre fiction. We talk about it a lot, but we generally are talking about crime fiction.

This is ostensibly a science fiction book, but as we get into our conversation with Jeff, this is a book that is really more about science in a way that I was completely unfamiliar with. He talks about the natural world in ways that are disquieting. I think it, so Dave Tompkins wrote a really awesome piece about this trilogy in the LA review of books. I tweeted out earlier last week, so you'll be listening to this Monday, so I tweeted it out last week. But I can tweet it out again. Dave talks about this idea of hyper objects, which is this things that the human brain can't quite understand. And so for as much as this book, Annihilation is about science, and it's about a biologist and a surveyor and a psychologist, all things. all jobs where your goal is to somehow bring order to chaos, right?

You're trying to say, this plant is this, and this bug is this, and the reason your brain is doing that is because of this. And if the river goes that way and this is over here, then that's that. Map making, mapping the human brain, mapping the natural world. But the whole charm of this book, strangely, is it's inexplicable, like, parts. You know, it's the magic in a weird way. And I don't mean that in the corny poof way. I mean that in the what if a dolphin had human eyes kind of way.

And just saying to yourself, well, what if? And keeping the what if going and keeping the, what if you didn't have an explanation for everything? It's a very neat construction too because annihilation is about people, as you alluded to, people with very rigid jobs. Essentially, they're all mapmakers of different stripes, whether you're a biologist or you're a psychiatrist, psychologist. going into the unexplainable and being stymied by it. All storytellers want to take something that's inside of them and find a way to communicate it to more people. Really risk-taking storytellers do the same things,

not with a story about, you know, Jack and Jill go up the hill or whatever, but about their dreams. And it's funny that we're talking about this book a week after we're talking about Twin Peaks or in the middle of talking about Twin Peaks, because there is something slightly similar here in that you can read pages of annihilation and not really, you sort of levitate because as specific as Jeff Vandermear is in his language

and as specific as he is with descriptions of natural things that he sees on his own nature walks in northern Florida, I don't really know what he's talking about. I can't picture it. What I'm vibing off of is the tone he's using to describe them, the way they interact with each other, and the sense of, I said that word before, but I'll say it again, disquiet. There are noises in the jungle in area X. Something is lurking in the reeds. You know, a lot of the books that you and I love are their guidebooks.

Like, they take you into a world and they immerse you by showing you all the vocabulary and the processes of robbing a bank or being a spy or, you know, corrupting a town in the case of Ross Thomas. And they do so with incredible specificity. It's one of the things I love about, like, my favorite dramatic works often are obsessive. with process and are obsessed with the specific language spoken by the people who do a certain job. Yeah. This is about the event and area X and the border.

And it was a confrontation for me to really like fill it in. I bet you and I have very different visions of what happens in this book and what it looks like. And in a lot of ways, you know, there's a lot of maps online of the world of annihilation and what the, what area X looks like. And I found myself very challenged at points to be like, I don't understand. Does the beach just go forever? Yeah.

You know, I don't understand. How far is it from the lighthouse to camp to the tunnel to the tower, the tunnel tower, and what is the tunnel tower? And do the words on the wall mean anything? And what is the crawler? I mean, there's a lot of negative space for you to fill in in this book. This book and the series in general, they don't do what we want them to do often. You know, and it resists a lot of, I'll say yours, I'll say mine, my hopes and dreams for it. You know, there is a narrative that you're promised at the beginning of adventurers going into the unknown.

And it's almost like you accept your ticket on that ride because you think you know what that ride is. Yeah. In our conversation with Jeff, he referenced Kafka. Kafka is probably a better point of reference for this than the adventure for you. fiction of Michael Crichton because... Or like something like the ruins, which is another book about the natural world creeping up. That's a good example. This doesn't

give you what you think you want going in. It gives you something very different. And, you know, our conversation for today and our conversation with Jeff was specifically about annihilation. You and I have both read the other two books in the trilogy and found there are highs in them and there are lows

in them. And I say this with real respect. I don't want this to sound pejorative. This trilogy can be very frustrating, I think, for that reason, because we want things to be certain way. You know, we talk to Jeff about there are some John LaCarray elements in the second book. You and I probably wanted more. You know, I was excited for it to go further in that direction, but no, this stays a series

about a, this author, Jeff Vandermear's very specific dreamlike world that he's created. And I think even beyond when you're, even if you, you know, he was inspired by a dream to write this book. That's right. He says he saw that. or thought of the inscription that I yelled out at the beginning of this podcast in a dream and that he had this vision of the tower tunnel. And for as much as it's based in dreams,

it also takes you back to a time in your life where, especially I think that you associate this with childhood, but it's increasingly hard to feel like there is unknowable things out there because there's so much information. And I think sometimes we talk a little bit about the idea of living in our a bubble, but I think if there's a bubble for me now, it's that it's hard for me to conceive of the unknown anymore because of, you know, if you live in cities for a really long time and then you just spend a lot of time on the internet, you just think that kind of have time

and history and space and geography all laid out for you. And this book doesn't take place anywhere in particular, at any time in particular, and the event that triggers it is not explained and the governmental sort of agency at the center of it is not particularly you ever really have an is this like an extension of FEMA

is this like a CIA like what is this it takes you back to that time in your life when you would walk out the door and you didn't know what was going to happen and you didn't know what was around the corner or down the street or a mile away let's take that a step further we love genre fiction or

the crime fiction that we've often recommended here because it gives us like all great fiction or maybe all great art a chance to step into other shoes. It gives us windows into other worlds. You know, but there are limits to that. And I think this book really undid me because it was so completely alien and foreign on a different level. So for example, we like to read Richard Price books because the way that he has, he can make police speak and criminals speak. And a sort of shadow world that existed underneath the New York City that we were, I guess, lucky enough. never to really steadfoot into.

That said, in Lush Life, we've been to Schillers. We've been to the Lower East Side. RIPP Schillers. I know, closing. We've walked those streets, so we're really just kind of seeing just below them. What this book made me realize is, I mean, this shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone who knows me,

but I don't know anything about nature. Like, I don't know what I'm looking at if I look at a view. I mean, I move to California now, and all of a sudden there are flowers in the backyard. All of a sudden, they have a backyard. I don't know what these things are. Right. I'm completely removed from something that is.

essential. Well, even the idea of something, like even just using that word of view. I mean, there's a view and then there's actually this immersive experience of though nature is actually encroaching on me. You know, there isn't a view. It's actually like my surroundings. Yeah, and the book does a very good job of sort of flipping your point of view, whereas when you read the book and you're basically embedded with this team of scientists venturing into the unknown, it's very natural to align yourselves with them and think, well, they're going to go, they're going to collect samples or whatever, like in a way mission on Star Trek, and then they're going to return to safety.

But it's not really like that. What is safety? Where do you actually want to be? What is calling you? Where do you belong? These are all the questions that come into play here. And when we spoke to Jeff about it, it does seem as if he himself is often quite comfortable going on long hikes and maybe not coming back.

Without guidance. Do you have theories, are you working theories about, what the writing means, the writing on the wall? No. I mean, and that's one of the things that if you enter a book like this with a certain spirit, you could be frustrated by it or you can just be sort of charmed and dazzled

and pleasantly confused by it. Yeah, it's something that I think we've been dealing with a lot in the last year with a lot of the stuff we've been watching, whether it's Westworld and now Twin Peaks and certain parts of the leftovers where you are, you think that what you're seeing is somehow like a,

going to be a key to understanding the other stuff in the world. Everything is a clue. So if there's a dream or a flashback or a vision, whether it's like Brand's Vision and Game of Thrones, that it's going to be, it's more of a deciphering tool for the real world that you're looking at.

But more and more, I think we're seeing things like annihilation and very much so Twin Peaks now where the subconscious is the conscious. Like the below the surface stuff is the surface. And it makes it very challenging to understand what's going on,

but it also is very hard to resist trying to crack codes. Yes, but it also, I think, makes us, it sort of forces us to interrogate this desire to understand things. Yeah. Which, you know, I have to say, is a very, if that is,

it's not new in the culture, but it's certainly more prevalent in the way we cover culture and talk about it. I would say that's a TV thing. I would say that TV in general, you know, throughout its history, has been, it's a, it's a, it's a furnace for plot. You shovel story and everything is a clue or a piece of

that story, you piece it together. We are all Detective Lenny Briscoe at the beginning of the season, then, you know, we solve the case at the end of it. Twin Peaks has challenged that. You know, it reminds us that it doesn't have to be this thing. And I think dipping a toe into the, into Area X is effective at that as well. And then the last point to mention, because we're going to be talking about this world again later in the year when Alex Scarlin's film comes out. It's always so fascinating when something that is abstract or in our heads as a novel becomes concrete and visual in a film.

I can't think of a more exciting translation in recent times than this because of how rich and lush and completely speculative the book is. And Alex Garland, who is himself a novelist, who made Ex Machina, has made this movie. and as Jeff was actually quite open him talking about the adaptation with us which I think you'll be excited to hear it's not the book and he has Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac

and Tessa Thompson and Gina Rodriguez and I think Mary Louise Parker playing these roles I think that's incredibly exciting and I think that people I think people are ready to be disquieted did this make you we talked to Jeff about his new novel Born

which I haven't read yet but apparently features a giant flying mechanized bear So that's a plus. We don't really do sci-fi very often. How did this make you feel about... It never really occurred to me that it was sci-fi. Any more so than Lost did. I think that it was more something

where I thought it was going to be like a world-building, apocalyptic dystopia, kind of like a pat... Not unlike the passage, and it was much more like Lovecraft or, you know, like the weird fiction that I think Jeff definitely has acknowledged. It was an influence on it.

So without further ado, why don't we get to our conversation with Jeff Van der Meer? Thanks very much for checking out the Double Down Book Club podcast for the Memorial Day. Yeah, we're going to have a new book for you guys to read soon. Yeah. Okay, without further ado, let's get to our conversation with Jeff Annamar. But first, let's hear from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Tile. What if you could find anything in seconds?

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iOS, Android, Chromecast, Apple TV, and Roku for $499 a month or $49.99 a year. But our listeners can get a free month by going to Shutter.com and entering promo code watch. This is a dope service. Take advantage of it. Check it out. It'll scare the hell out of you. Okay. Chris and I are very excited to be joined by the author of our book club pick Annihilation, Jeff Van der Meer, who is joining us on the phone from I Believe, Florida. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. We're excited to talk to you about the book.

I especially want to thank you for talking to us about a book that for you is more than a couple years old. It was published in 2014. Your new novel, Born, is out now, and we will talk to you a little bit about that at the end. But thank you. Is it difficult to go back in time and talk about the Southern Reach, or are you still mired in it? And I guess it is the kind of place where it's pretty easy to get lost in. That's sort of baked into the concept. Yeah, absolutely, and I think there's some ambiguity there that readers kind of inhabit with their own imagination.

Absolutely. I want to begin with kind of a general question for you. First, I have to cop to my own weakness. I have to say I don't read that much science fiction. And I realized when I was reading your book, and I read it the whole trilogy, but I read Annihilation, I think, on one long cross-country plane flight, and it haunted my dreams. These sort of biases that I carry about it, I realized that when I was thinking about science fiction, and I don't even know if that's a term you use to describe these books. I'd be curious if you do. But I imagine a very hard science. Like I imagine things like, like many cliches like robots or spaceships or phasers, but you read your books and there's a lushness and a softness to the nature that you write about that is very surprising and very kind of intoxicating. I had to sort of rewire my brain to visualize it. Yeah, I kind of come out from kind of a Kafka-ass point of view. I've always been in genre, and, you know, I've been in these books thinking of it as kind of using the tropes of uncanny fiction to expect that 90% of that book,

for example, is description of or based on the hiking trail I do out at St. Mark, you know, makes it kind of autobiographical and to see, it seems very naturalistic to be in many ways, so it's kind of a mix of things and I don't get too hung up on the labels, but yeah, I'd say it's not straightforward science fiction. But there is a lot of

science in it. You alluded to walks that you take. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Where you're specifically talking about? Yeah, there's a place called the St. Mark's Lighthouse is out there, which is a defunct, but the 14-mile walk I do out there where I've seen a lead, and, you know, when you first see

one of those in a place where it's not supposed to be. It's a very uncanny experience because your brain literally like locks up. It keeps supposed to be there. So those kinds of signifiers and those kinds of experience. You know, moments that... You know, Jeff, you mentioned the brain trying to negotiate the things that it's experiencing or seeing. And I think something that I really loved about annihilation is how these characters are sort

of defined by their occupations, you know, and those. occupations are all in different ways in in service of categorizing the world and trying to understand the world and they're confronted with a world that is uncategorizable and that defies what they know about you know how to do their jobs and how to understand their surroundings how did you choose the the sort of jobs that the characters were going to be doing on on this expedition well it's really really strange because I had in my head I had this that you've probably read about where I walk night, and in the morning a few pages of the novel,

and I kind of tried to make sense of it. It's like what hear of people, and, you know, every time I try to assign a name to the characters, I knew them less and less, and, you know, I waited one day to think about it. And again, the more I tried to, and then it was interesting defined just by their actions and what they say, more or less, which is, you know, kind of how we judge people anyway, not necessarily by their name. It just kind of came about naturally, and then I made sense the mystery of why that was between the Southern Reach secret agency's paranoia and what was going on in area. There's also a recurring theme throughout the trilogy,

although we're speaking specifically about annihilation, where characters in the beginning you've labeled them by their jobs, but as the series progresses, we meet characters who have changed their name, who asked to be called different things. We meet them under different guises and under different, they may, in fact, be completely different people who almost embody the same skin.

That seems to be a theme of particular interest to you in this world. work. Well, I do think that there's some themes of like doppelgangers and whatnot because of what area X is doing and I connie the answer to the third book. Jeff, you know, one of the things I was reading totally by accident, but I read Annihilation almost, I can't remember if it was before or after, but it was basically in conjunction with Peter Matheson's The Shadow Country, which is obviously another epic novel about the taming or not taming of Florida and treats Florida like a frontier. You've talked a lot about the influence that the geography and the feel of the southeast has had on the book.

But I was wondering if you could talk specifically about Florida because it's a place that I've only visited. I went there to visit grandparents, but it's one of the most distinctive places I've ever been. Even when I go back now, as soon as you smell Florida after you get off the plane, you know exactly where you are in a way that is very unique in the world. And I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the real-life locations that influence the book. Well, I mean, you know, there's a few things that influence that book. And then going out, it's kind of a kind of the terrain at times of Southern Georgia, which can kind of lull you into thinking of it as being like, and you have a lot more fungus and other things.

I'm looking into my backyard a month ago. There was like nothing to thinking it's one thing. You live in it. You realize you're kind of. And then, you know, I also had day jobs when I had day jobs, were an 18-month period. and that's like 67 counties, and they're always in weird kinds of terrain. And so there's always something to me a little bit poking through, because, you know, honestly, if you got rid of pesticide and air conditioning,

this place would be reclaimed by vegetation within six months. I think Miami is trying to prove you right right now. Well, I mean, yeah, they're doing stupid things. They're going to be just worse than 10 years who knows that there'll be a South Florida in 30 years. Yeah, that's one of the things I wanted to get at with you here is that in general, I think we can probably all agree that as Americans, we don't talk about the idea of environment enough. But that said, when we do, we often talk about it in very distancing terms. We say, well, we're either going to save it or we're going to destroy it.

But in all the conversations we, up a group myself, and that group tend to have, we humans are sort of removed from it. We are the deciders. We are separate and apart. It's just something that happens to us or happens around us. But your books in very subtle and very powerful ways make the opposite argument. that nature is active and reclaiming us, basically. And it's insidious the way that sort of like the subtropics creeps into your mind. Well, also, I think that we're not separate for our environment.

It's hilarious to make all these changes anyway. It's still, I think, a theme in all of my work that we need to renegotiate our... Jeff, you know, we talk often on this pod about deciphering pop culture, I mean, talking about whether it's Westworld or Alien Covenant or... anything that we're talking about where and obviously with the internet you've got this engine of of information and theory theorizing about what things mean and I was kind of curious I mean this would obviously be the case in the 1980s if you wrote this book and somebody just came up to you at a reading and said hey this is what I think the writing on the wall means

but I I wondered you mentioned the fan art and the fan the fan sites around the trilogy have you encountered anything that you were like Man, I hadn't thought of that, or anything particularly inspiring or that you found very compelling along the way since the books have come out in 2014? Well, the art's been a lot of reason for the series, but then there's things like there's fan fiction online combining true detective and annihilation with rust going down into the tunnel tower with the biologist. What? Yeah, and I find those kinds of conversations. I mean, it's like real critique of both things that it solves. But yeah, so I find things like that really fascinating.

I find just because I love them from a fictional point of view, the kind of conspiracy theory, Southern Reach. And there is kind of like a whole sedimentary layer to movies they've ever seen and all the weird fiction that I've read. And I think that that is some of the fans and where some of this stuff comes from because it's kind of reconstituting it or layering it in a slightly different way.

as kind of a renovation and the fans kind of respond to that. Yeah, and then Authority, of course, has the whole espionage element to it that I loved the sort of Lecheré element of the second one. Yeah, I'm a huge LeCheré fan as might be obvious. But, yeah, people engage with. There's even a hypnosis, reviews every hypnosis novel. Every novel is hypnosis in it as if it is erotic. Huh. And then gave it five-starrett.

So there's those kinds of reactions, too. When some of you lose some. Is there? Do you think that's a... Yeah. There's no-win situation there, but, you know. Do you think erotic hypnotist is a legitimate job in 2017? Oh, yeah.

That's a pretty good field to get into it. I have to say that for anyone who's into that, and that's fine, these novels were not written that way. Yeah. You could probably major in erotic hypnosis at University of Phoenix or something. I think that's absolutely right. So I think anyone who reads these books, and particularly the first one, will pick up on some of these themes of environmentalism

and basically in subtle ways asking people to reconsider. or the landscape that they live in. But there was another theme that I really responded to, which is, it's crazy that I'm saying this, but it does seem like a relic. It seems like something that is increasingly less and less possible, which is the possibility for people to lose themselves or to just start over or tap out and start again.

The coast is the forgotten coast in this book. And obviously, you know, anyone who reads the back cover will know your connection to Northern Florida and maybe kind of geolocate the books there. But really, it doesn't have to be there. And, you know, in the lighthouse keeper, his story, the biologist, even control. These people who, at a certain point, give in to this feeling and actually welcome the

sense of being lost, and there's a sort of a sense of annoyance that people keep trying to come and find them. Clearly that must appeal to you on some level. Well, it does. I mean, it does reflect at least the situational feeling when you're out hiking in the middle of nowhere. I am hiking a new trail. I get disoriented, and it's both don't really get lost that much anymore, right?

Right. between all our devices and everything. And so, you know, you might say that's kind of weird that you want to be lost, but at the same time, it does speak to actually being out in the unknown and kind of being, you know, breaking away from the kinds of moments of black. And that was an awe-inspiring experience

because, you know, I didn't have any weapons with me. I had this experience of just, like, standing on the trail. You're talking about a professional hockey player you ran into you're saying. Right. and just waiting for this thing to either eat me or not. You know, because you don't usually get in those kinds of situations either. He didn't, right? No, I didn't.

We're not sure. This could be Jeff Stauffelgayor we're talking to. I could be. You don't know. You don't know. You can't see you right now. Jeff, not to do two arch of a segue, but you're talking about lack of control. And to some extent, you know, once an author puts the work into the world

and you've been lucky enough to have this book adapted, and you've been really lucky because, you know, you're being adapted by one of the most interesting filmmakers working today, Alex Carlin. And a novelist himself. Yeah. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, obviously I'm sure you're very excited for it. The stills from the set looked exquisite and amazing. But what's it been like to sort of have your novel go through the process of being adapted for the big screen? Well, the first thing that I realized is that even though Alex Carlin says he's not an at a tour, he is an atroar.

So I expect anything to do with the movie, and that's the actual fact. He wrote the script, and he was kind enough to keep me in the loop during every part of the process, but that wasn't for me to put my two cents in, basically. It was just so I would know it's going on. We're thinking about putting the tower tunnel under the lighthouse. How do you feel about that? And I'd be like, well, I'm not sure I feel about that. And he'd be like, great, we're going to do that.

So I don't say that in any pejorative way. Alex has been incredibly kind in keeping me in the loop. And I did finally see the film. Eat an anchor here. It seems to me to be the kind of ending that, like, 2001 or something like that, people will be talking about it around the water cooler for, like, years. That's exciting. And visually, it's amazing.

I must say that. And that's probably all I really should say, since I'm not sure what the studio wants me to say or not say at this point. But it is funny to hear you talk about it because in a way this is just the highest profile, biggest budgeted fan art there is, right? Because this is, you wrote something that is incredibly lush and incredibly detailed in its observations and the world that it creates. But it is because it is a book, it leaves it up to our imagination to really fill in those blanks. And that was an exciting challenge for me as a reader who's not even used to this world you're describing.

now it will be made explicitly visual. It sounds like some of the decisions were to keep the ambiguity, but it has to be a very different kind of ambiguity on the big screen. It does, because there is actually a lot of interiority, no matter how much the biologist doesn't like reporting in the movie, because that makes sense and don't make it out of the screen. And then just decisions that there's at least one scene, though, where a character kind of disappears.

Spirit of the book, there are moments like that that help anchor it. Yeah, it's actually more surreal. Let's just, we'll let you go in a moment, but we did want to talk briefly about Bourne, which is your new novel, and I wish I could say I've finished it yet. I haven't, so I'd love for you to give a chance, you know, just have an opportunity to talk to our listeners and your new readers about it. Because once again, like the Southern Reed trilogy, you put readers in a complex and challenging and disorienting world. And once again, there is a little, there is a, see, I don't even have the language for the way that you write. I was going to say metaphysical, but it is actually physical again. You know, there's something that is both biological and potentially fictional that exists in this.

Well, I think that the difference is that where annihilation is coming at science fiction from the uncanny, there's a giant flying bear in it. It shouldn't be science fiction, even though I provided explanation. but that just gave me an opportunity to include biotech and talk about issues like that and talk about issues of scarcity and the environment in a more urban setting in a way that didn't require me to have loads and loads of this normal kind of hard science explanation because at the core of the story is this woman, Rachel, the scavenger, who finds this bit of biospeak and that she raises as a child.

So in some ways I think it's a more accessible book than the Southern Reach because that's the core of the novel. And it's about characters who are trying to be their better selves who are trying to connect. And Annihilation and the other books in the series are all about characters that really can't connect.

And that's a major difference. I also just think I speak for everyone listening when I say that all entertainment would be improved by giant flying bears, especially true detective, but that might just be me. Maybe when David Milch comes on we can get some flying bears.

You're doing the Lord's work with flying bears. I was quite, It was just to use the words giant flying bear over and over again. If nothing else. It's nothing else, right. And to think we have a wild panther to thank for the fact that you were able to write this book and put those words together in that order in our newspapers. It's amazing.

Yeah, pretty much. Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. I hope that everyone who's read Annihilation will check out the other books in Southern Reach trilogy and Bourne and then have very strong opinions about the movie when it's released next year. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us, Jeff. Yeah, thank you very much. Take care. Okay, man, that was Jeff Vandermeer, author of Annihilation,

the Double Down Book Club selection for this week. We'll come up with another one pretty soon. Greenwald, happy Memorial Day. Happy Memorial Day, Beranski. Get some barbecue going. Yeah, I think we'll try to catch up with Fargo this coming Thursday. We've got to keep talking Twin Peaks. And we've got to keep talking Twin Peaks.

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