2014 Nebula Winner: ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is the kind of active and well-liked leader in the science fiction community to whom the SFWA often seems to award Nebulas. I've hinted in the past that this seeming emphasis on the writer over the work hasn't always led to the strongest winners, in my opinion, but things worked out well with this choice. Annihilation is a strong and intriguing work of speculative fiction with literary ambitions - in other words, just what I'm looking for in these winners.

The novel is written as a journal of an expedition into a mysterious place called Area X that has a strange ecology and dramatic effects on the minds of any humans who enter it. The biologist of the twelfth expedition narrates, and we never learn her name or the names of the other expedition members (a psychologist, a surveyor, and an anthropologist). Things, of course, go wrong immediately, The results are pretty trippy with a heavy focus on how perception shapes behavior. VanderMeer can accomplish a lot, for instance, with the simple fact that expedition members can't agree on whether to call an artifact they find a "tunnel" or a "tower." I haven't always been a fan of very surrealist sf, but it works well here, as the images offer some great surprises and puzzles that stimulated my imagination, Interspersed with these events are flashbacks to the biologists pre-expedition life that build a very convincing character - she is surprisingly well-rounded despite remaining unnamed.

It's short and fast-paced, and I actually thought the length perfect. For a book that is abstract in many ways and doesn't seem interested in explaining many of its mysteries, spending any longer in this world might have gotten a little tiring. But, it ends on a very strong note. However, this is the first volume in The Southern Reach trilogy (all published in 2014 in an interesting strategy), so I guess there is more to be said about Area X and the efforts to explore it. I'm reluctant to dive into the other books not despite my enjoyment of this one but because that enjoyment was so predicated on its length and mystery. If anyone out there is reading and wants to recommend books two and three, I'd love to hear from them though.

Grade: A-