I noticed the anthropologist checking her black box, was relieved to see it did not display a glowing red light. I was agitated by the idea that she might experience the same need to read further and would act upon it. I had decided instead to make believe that it was simply a protected wildlife refuge, and we were hikers who happened to be scientists. And this in the context, too, of not bringing with us the old "culture creatures" as Schama puts it in his book Landscape and Memory. Looking back at the Crawler one final time, she sees inside its light the trapped face of the lighthouse keeper from the photograph.

I knew that it was planned as a trilogy by the author, but there was only the manuscript for the first book. But other phenomena could also result in “premature dissolution of expeditions,” as our superiors put it, so we needed to test our stamina for that place. There was a steely tone to her words that made the anthropologist mumble something noncommittal and stare at the ground. It's been a long time since a book filled me with this kind of palpable, wondrous disquiet, a feeling that started on the first page and that I'm not sure I've yet shaken.I understood this from having been given an opportunity along with the others to view videotape of the reentry interviews with the members of the eleventh expedition. Her demeanor more assertive than just a moment before, the psychologist said, “You will retain a memory of having discussed several options with regard to the tunnel. Then, as I stared, the “vines” resolved further, and I saw that they were words, in cursive, the letters raised about six inches off the wall. This made sense on another level: We did not know what had happened here, what was still happening here, and any preformed theories would affect my analysis of the evidence as we encountered it. When I snap my fingers, you will have no memory of this conversation, but will follow my directives.

I could not tell which part I craved and which I feared, and I kept seeing the inside of nautilus shells and other naturally occurring patterns balanced against a sudden leap off a cliff into the unknown. There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you. VanderMeer’s writing is effortlessly engaging, leading the reader one step at a time into this strange, hypnotic and almost hallucinogenic world which, whilst not overtly involved, rides a line of tension from beginning to end. Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.Impatient for the movie, I decided to give Annihilation a read, feeling rather excited that it was part of a three-book trilogy. Perhaps she meant merely to reassure us, but I would like to believe she was trying to reassure herself. Any other evaluation depended on environmental and biological factors about which I was increasingly convinced I had inadequate data. All three of us lurched, and the anthropologist fell to one knee, while the psychologist patiently waited for us to recover. The anthropologist in particular was on edge; her gaze couldn’t alight on any one thing but kept moving and moving.