Summary
“Successfully creepy, an old-style gothic horror novel set in a not-too-distant future. The best bits turn your mind inside out.” 
—Sara Sklaroff, The Washington Post
Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed Southern Reach Trilogy—now in a beautiful new paperback edition.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death.

In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover lifeforms that surpass understanding. But it’s the secrets they carried across the border with them that change everything.
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Jeff VanderMeer is the authorof Hummingbird Salamander, the Borne novels(Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts), andThe Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority,and Acceptance), the first volume of which won theNebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award andwas adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. Hespeaks and writes frequently about issues relating toclimate change as well as urban rewilding. He livesin Tallahassee, Florida, on the edge of a ravine, withhis wife, Ann VanderMeer, and their cat, Neo.