annihilation is soooo good because the biologist is aware that she is an unreliable narrator and also hates it. she WANTS to be completely impartial and objective and just observe everything without influencing any of it. but she cant so instead she omits her name from the entire book to the point where it's almost absurd and completely intentional and splits her journal into "objective" chapters detailing her expedition and "subjective" chapters detailing her memories about her husband. ill never be over you biologist
It’s not destroying… It’s making something new
“Even the darkness seemed more alive to me, surrounding me like something physical. I can’t even say it was a sinister presence.”
“Area X mutates and copies everything within it at impossible speeds, alligators bite with the teeth of sharks, human intestines slither like snakes. In the movie at least we learn a little bit about how this happens, but we don’t know why. Area X is beyond meaning. It makes the concept of purpose itself seem tiny and frail. Everything we thought we knew about our place in the hierarchy of the universe and even our own planet is disintegrated within its borders. Our fear of it is expressed in a stupor instead of a scream. The soggy fading awareness of being absorbed into a larger ecosystem which doesn’t know your name or your fears or your dreams. Area X can’t be properly observed or theorised about by its visitors because to enter Area X is to become Area X. The only constant is change. The only dogma is oblivion. […] The complete oblivion of the self is a central tenet of so many different religions. Faith is about embracing how small you are and bowing before something too big to comprehend. The Buddhist Shōbōgenzō says “Forgetting oneself is opening oneself.” The Christian Bible says “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The Quran says “The creation of the heavens and earth is greater than the creation of mankind, but most of the people do not know.” If God didn’t want us to make peace with emptiness, God wouldn’t be so quiet. If we can’t make peace, we self-destruct. Annihilation is all about this pressure.”
“But there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental. You will see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost in your thoughts in part from the panic of realizing the size of that imagined leviathan.”
— Nathan Wellman of Acolytes of Horror
We come from this earth and we will return to this earth. The word human is a derivative of the word humus. Tessa Thompson in Annihilation André 3000 in High Life
Annihilation (2018) Directed by Alex Garland
jeff vandermeer’s annotations for annihilation…… he really does Get It
alternative annihilation movie posters
kilian eng / matheuss berant tomer hanuka / travis english
It wasn’t destroying. It was changing everything. It was making something new.
ANNIHILATION — 2018, dir. Alex Garland
“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing.
And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.”
- Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation, 2014.
Mary Magdalene as a Hermit (1833), Francesco Hayez // Annihilation (2018), Alex Garland
The Loneliness of Science Fiction
- Interstellar (2014, dir. Christopher Nolan)
- The Martian (2015, dir. Ridley Scott)
- Annihilation (2018, dir. Alex Garland)
- Blade Runner 2049 (2017, dir. Denis Villeneuve)
- Arrival (2016, dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Annihilation poster by Kilian Eng.
It’s not destroying… It’s making something new
The Loneliness of Science Fiction
- Interstellar (2014, dir. Christopher Nolan)
- The Martian (2015, dir. Ridley Scott)
- Annihilation (2018, dir. Alex Garland)
- Blade Runner 2049 (2017, dir. Denis Villeneuve)
- Arrival (2016, dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Annihilation (2018.) dir. Alex Garland
Imagine dying frightened and in pain, and having that as the only part of you which survives. I wouldn’t like that at all.
Annihilation (2018) Directed by Alex Garland