Authority
In ‘Annihilation’, Jeff VanderMeer introduced Area X – a remote and lush terrain mysteriously sequestered from civilisation. This was the first volume of a projected trilogy; well in advance of publication, translation rights had already sold around the world and a major movie deal had been struck.Just months later, ‘Authority’, the second volume, is here. For thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X has taken the form of a series of expeditions monitored by a secret agency called the Southern Reach. After the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the Southern Reach is in disarray, and John Rodriguez, aka “Control,” is the team’s newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves – and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he’s promised to serve. And the consequences will spread much further than that.The Southern Reach trilogy will conclude in autumn 2014 with ‘Acceptance’.
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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London, SE1 9GF, UK
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2014
Copyright © VanderMeer Creative, Inc. 2014
Jeff VanderMeer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007553464
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007553495
Version: 2018-09-26
âA tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, [Annihilation] builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwardsâ
LAUREN BEUKES, author of The Shining Girls
âA lasting monument to the uncanny ⦠you find yourself afraid to turn the page ⦠We are less than 200 pages in to the Southern Reach Trilogy ⦠and already home is a distant memoryâ
SIMON INGS, Guardian
âAnnihilation owes much to the explorations of psycho-geographical landscapes in early J. G. Ballard and also to the work of the old masters of weird fiction such as H. P. Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson, with their love of nameless horrors haunting liminal realms. VanderMeer synthesises these influences to create a tale with a deliciously creepy atmosphere of dreadâ
JAMES LOVEGROVE, Financial Times
âImmersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel. If the sequels live up to it, then the Southern Reach series will be a major workâ
WILL SALMON, SFX Magazine
âA clear triumph for VanderMeer, [who] has suddenly transcended genre with a compelling, elegant and existential story of far broader appeal ⦠A novel whose world is built seamlessly and whose symbols are rich and darkâ
LYDIA MILLET, LA Times
âA teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike ⦠The writing itself has a clarity that makes the abundancy of the setting more powerfulâ
PAUL KINCAID, Sunday Telegraph
For Ann
Contents
Copyright
Praise for the Southern Reach Trilogy
Dedication
Incantations
000
001: Falling
002: Adjustments
003: Processing
004: Reentry
Rites
005: The First Breach
006: Typographical Anomalies
007: Superstition
008: The Terror
009: Evidence
010: Fourth Breach
011: Sixth Breach
012: Sort of Sorting
013: Recommendations
014: Heroic Heroes of the Revolution
015: Seventh Breach
016: Terroirs
017: Perspective
018: Recovery
Hauntings
000
020: Second Recovery
021: Repeating
022: Gambit
023: Break Down
00X
Afterlife
Acknowledgments
The Southern Reach Trilogy Book 3: Acceptance
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
In Controlâs dreams it is early morning, the sky deep blue with just a twinge of light. He is staring from a cliff down into an abyss, a bay, a cove. It always changes. He can see for miles into the still water. He can see ocean behemoths gliding there, like submarines or bell-shaped orchids or the wide hulls of ships, silent, ever moving, the size of them conveying such a sense of power that he can feel the havoc of their passage even from so far above. He stares for hours at the shapes, the movements, listening to the whispers echoing up to him ⦠and then he falls. Slowly, too slowly, he falls soundless into the dark water, without splash or ripple. And keeps falling.
Sometimes this happens while he is awake, as if he hasnât been paying enough attention, and then he silently recites his own name until the real world returns to him.
First day. The beginning of his last chance.
âThese are the survivors?â
Control stood beside the assistant director of the Southern Reach, behind smudged one-way glass, staring at the three individuals sitting in the interrogation room. Returnees from the twelfth expedition into Area X.
The assistant director, a tall, thin black woman in her forties, said nothing back, which didnât surprise Control. She hadnât wasted an extra word on him since heâd arrived that morning after taking Monday to get settled. She hadnât spared him an extra look, either, except when heâd told her and the rest of the staff to call him âControl,â not âJohnâ or âRodriguez.â She had paused a beat, then replied, âIn that case, call me Patience, not Grace,â much to the stifled amusement of those present. The deflection away from her real name to one that also meant something else interested him. âThatâs okay,â heâd said, âI can just call you Grace,â certain this would not please her. She parried by continually referring to him as the âactingâ director. Which was true: There lay between her stewardship and his ascension a gap, a valley of time and forms to be filled out, procedures to be followed, the rooting out and hiring of staff. Until then, the issue of authority might be murky.
