Annihilation

Now a major motion picture, written and directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac.

The first volume of the extraordinary Southern Reach Trilogy – Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance.

Our expedition was the first to enter Area X for more than two years, and much of our predecessor’s equipment had rusted , their tents and sheds little more than husks. Looking out over that untroubled landscape, I do not believe any of us could yet see the threat.

For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border - an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.

The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.

Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown. Narrated by the nameless biologist, the expedition undertakes their mission to chart and measure the land.

But soon they find they are in the grip of something both strange and all-too-familiar. An unmapped tunnel is not what it seems, at dusk the cries ring out and always, on the horizon, lies the promise of the mysterious lighthouse and the secrets it holds within its grasp.

Described as ‘a contemporary masterpiece’ by the Guardian, The Southern Reach Trilogy is a stunning work of contemporary science fiction that challenges the boundary between known and the unknown, human and alien, terror and limitless beauty.

Read X Marks the Plot, our exclusive interview with Jeff VanderMeer, on the Waterstones Blog