Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has r
eclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned
with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mas
s suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on on
e another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their f
ormer selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In "Annihilation," the f
irst volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth exp
edition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a p
sychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission i
s to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one a
notioner, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
