How Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series reflects our own relationship with the changing environment
The American author discussed the final novel of the Southern Reach series, Absolution, on Bookends
As a kid, American writer Jeff VanderMeer wanted to be a marine biologist.
He was also an avid birder, writing lists of the birds he spotted around his home in Fiji.
But as he discovered his love of narratives, he began writing fiction that deals with the relationship between human beings and the natural world. His breakout series Southern Reach is no different — and grapples with environmental themes in its own strange and terrifying way.
When the Southern Reach series was first published 10 years ago, it was an instant sensation. The three novels, Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance, centre around Area X, a mysterious environmental phenomenon where fantastical creatures lurk and inexplicable things happen.
After the trilogy wrapped up, fans thought the story ended there — and VanderMeer wrote other books including Hummingbird, Salamander and the Borne series. But in 2024, VanderMeer surprise-announced a fourth instalment called Absolution, which reveals the history of Area X and extends its story into the future.
Absolution explores the conditions that may have contributed to the formation of Area X, including government complicity and scientific experimentation. It includes an account of the very first expedition into Area X, which is surrounded by an invisible border on a coastline that's referred to as the Forgotten Coast.
In some expeditions into Area X, researchers don't find anything unnatural. Instead, they find that Area X is actually getting rid of some of the pollution in the region.
"So there is this kind of conundrum where it's both threatening, but it's also doing something that on some level is seen as benign," said VanderMeer on Bookends with Mattea Roach.
"At the same time, other expeditions find completely uncanny, bizarre circumstances going on inside that border. So it's kind of like they're investigating a life form or a thing where they don't understand the seasons or the rhythm of."
It's the human tendency to have an adverse reaction to things that are unknown that VanderMeer is especially interested in exploring through his fiction.
"A lot of what I'm doing is re-examining the world around us," he said. "And maybe it's in an uncanny context, but it's really about reflections of the real world and trying to get to some truth about the way in which we exist in that world alongside our fellow beings."
Florida coast setting
The location of Area X is inspired by Florida's Forgotten Coast and VanderMeer's first time exploring there in the early 90s on a hiking-trip-gone-wrong.
He was hiking the trail at the Saint Marks National Wildlife Refuge when an unexpected thunderstorm snuck up on him and caused him to lose his map and his bearings.
"Even though it turned out that I was only literally like a mile from the road, there was a long period where I thought I was lost on the coast and I was going to have to find my way to the sea to track back."
This experience of disorientation influenced VanderMeer to write a story about an enigmatic place. And so, the idea for Area X was born.
Hurricanes in life and fiction
VanderMeer draws parallels between the threats his characters face and those in the real world.
Absolution features a hurricane event, which is an aspect of climate change VanderMeer deals with more and more frequently as a resident of Tallahassee, Fla. When he was on Bookends, he had just returned to his home after fleeing from Hurricane Helene.
"It feels like this inescapable thing. At one point, we felt like we could understand, we could have a rational escape route for [it]."
But now, with water getting warmer and storms getting more rapid in their movements, they're more unpredictable and affect people living inland more often, he said.
He also sees parallels in Florida's response to hurricanes and the policies of the Southern Reach in Absolution.
"We often feel frozen or have the wrong solutions to the climate crisis here in Florida," said VanderMeer. "We often see hard cement walls put up, or in one case, sand put on beaches in Tampa to restore a beach that then, just a few weeks later, is wiped off that beach."
"We spend all this money on these things that are absurd, that make no sense…. So I think in that way it definitely mirrors Area X in how the Southern Reach tries to grapple with something that, admittedly, is so large that it's very difficult to grasp the entirety of and to create policy that makes sense for [it]."
A sense of hope
VanderMeer still projects a sliver of optimism that once we shift our ideas and our approach to the environment, things will work out — both our world and the one in the novel.
"In Absolution, I think that the hopefulness is in the struggle despite the odds, so to speak, and trying to come to a clear understanding and also adaptation," he said.
"We do have to change pretty radically how we think about the world. But I do think it is possible and I think that it's still something that we can do, but we have to see the world a little more clearly than we do, we have to have policies that make sense that are not politicized."
Comments have been edited for length and clarity. The interview was produced by Katy Swailes.
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