Theme in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (mostly Annihilation though)

Hey folks

It's my birthday today (getting old) and I'd like to share with you my thoughts on Jeff VanderMeer's existential horror novel called Annihilation and its sequels (Authority and Acceptance). Annihilation is one of my favourite books of all time and truth be told I haven't been able to find anything in the science fiction/cosmic horror/existential horror gene that tops it.

Have you read the books? You should! (However, you should skip the second book in the series - if you commit to the whole Southern Reach trilogy - and read only the last twenty pages or so. It's really not necessary to read the rest because there's a) no plot and b) it's boring as heck to follow a main character who goes to hid job in a boring office and does boring stuff there.)

Annihilation (the first book in the trilogy) is one of the best books I've ever read. It's quite honestly also (one of) the most impactful book(s) in my library.

I want to tell you why.

The most striking theme in Annihilation was to me the existential dread/horror the protagonist faces as she ventures into Area X. It has so much in common with what I'm constantly going through in real life (confusion about life/depression/trying to find ways to improve myself/trying to find meaning in life itself) that it resonated with me very deeply. There is always a sense of not knowing what's going on and what's going to happen. The tension is constant and the stakes are higher than life or death. They are existential. The biologist (the main character of the first book) finds new and stranger things every time she takes a step forward in Area X just as anyone else faces problem after problem in their day to day lives.

There are several scenes in the book where events happen and are not explained. This would be annoying in most books but in Annihilation it fits perfectly.

The ending too is very open and inconclusive. There is no 'good guy defeats bad guy' or even 'protagonist overcomes antagonist' climax. The climax is written the same as the rest of the book - very quietly but with lots of tension in it. The ending remains open-ended.

Another reason why this book is great is its main character - the biologist. The biologist does not change whatsoever during the course of the book (although she learn a lot of new and weird things). A lot of the times this is likely to be the sign of a bad book. But not so with Annihilation. The whole journey of the protagonist is so beautifully written and her character explained/developed that it impressed upon me such an awareness of how it's not always necessary to win/to defeat your own demons/etc. etc.. The point made was that everyone lives with some sort of disadvantage or baggage in life - which is true - and the point that follows this initial tidbit is that it does not matter at all. In a sense it says 'the past does not matter' just like the psychologist Alfred Adler did.

What does matter (and here Annihilation makes the greatest case for itself) is that we must simply go on despite our baggage/fears/anxieties/past. We must go on while trying to become better versions of ourselves. We must stay in motion and never surrender even when we feel hopeless or feel as if our life is meaningless or has come to a crushing end. This is portrayed by the book's ending very well. The biologist does not achieve what she set out to do immediately. What she expected did not come to pass. And still she decides to go on. There is no going back for her - or us - into the past. To return to the real world beyond Area X would be an admission of defeat but despite there being almost no hope of still achieving her goal the biologist soldiers on. It doesn't so much say 'go on despite adversity' as 'go on because there is nothing else left and you cannot return to the past'. It gives you a sense that there is only one way - forward.

At this end point of the story the biologist's motivations have changed (her initial goal did not come to pass) but her journey forward has not really. The biologist continues to move forward not to achieve her prior goal but because 'What else is there to do?'. I personally found that very beautiful and it immediately turned Annihilation into one of my favourite books. (Likely even the most favourite). I haven't been able to find anything that compares since.

Authority

Obviously after reading and loving Annihilation from sentence one I decided to stick with the trilogy. I read Authority next... and was severely disappointed. There is literally nothing that redeems this mock-up of a novel. In about the same 250 pages as Annihilation nothing whatsoever happens except some dude I don't care about (called Control, of all things) goes to work doing a job I don't care about (spoiler alert, he's a desk clerk in an office). And that's the book. The last twenty or so pages alone are relevant to the plot set up by Annihilation and continued in Acceptance, but the rest is plot-less plodding along of the most boring kind.

I recommend you skip most of the book and only read the last 20-30 pages to get the one small piece of information you'll need (but not even truly need) to get into the beginning of Acceptance smoothly.

Acceptance

In Acceptance the existential horror switches to cosmic horror. It's reasonably well done and I liked a lot about it (but not everything). Acceptance starts where Authority's last few pages left off. It's written from multiple points of view out of which only two are really great. The best one is of course Saul's. This was one of my first experiences with an author who writes a homosexual character and does not make the book all (angsty and boring) about it. No. Saul's story is really well done. I truly felt for the character and later on his lover as well. There is no 'oh he's so special because he's g-a-y'. He simply was attracted to men and had a boyfriend(-ish?) and that's it. This stood in stark contrast to a lot of other queer novels whose only point seems to be to make a big deal out of their characters being non-heterosexual. Acceptance did not and so of course this off-handed way of telling us he's gay was at the time a huge plus point from my point of view and also gave Jeff VanderMeer a lot of credibility in my eyes.

If he included Saul's homosexuality just to have the obligatory homosexual or whether Saul came to him this way I don't know (and probably never will) but it read very smoothly on the pages. It was just as a valid and real a relationship portrayal as any romantic side-plot I'd read before. And therefore that's a thing to applaud VanderMeer for. He did not draw attention to it.

The rest of the plot revolving Saul was the same level of perfect. A focus was put on Saul's experiences with Area X and its formation. I liked that a lot. It did not clarify anything in Annihilation (although it did give some hints of how Area X was made) and it really only served to pose more questions. At the end of the trilogy there is still a great sense of mystery and strangeness around and Area X has neither been conquered (again not hero beating a villain) nor destroyed. It is simply there and it is spreading from its point of origin.

What happens next (if anything at all) is up to the reader's imagination.

I won't like. I'm dying to read more about Area X and what happened to it/our world when it spread. But I am equally happy with the conclusion as it is. Not everything is knowable. The world is not as transparent as most books would have us believe. And that's just beautiful when it's written down in a book.

All that's left to do is watch the movie. (I know I'm late!)

Have a good night/day! WriteBot.

Review of Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect

Hey folks

I've been listening to the audio book these last few days (I don't usually like audio books at all but non-fiction seems to be easier to listen to than fiction) and wanted to give you a review of it!

All right. The Compound Effect. Most of the book's advice is pretty generic and not actual fresh and/or unique research. It's the sort of book that tells you 'The more you practice the luckier you get'. (The usual spiel about people not being actually 'lucky' but working hard so that when the opportunity arises they can take it. Whereas other people don't work hard enough so they cannot get 'lucky' when an opportunity presents itself.)

The author also likes to pat himself on the back with how many famous people he knows at different companies (Apple for example) and how their CEOs personally interacted with him at some point. That can be a bit annoying.

The gist of the book is hard/diligent/persistent work over time = success.

A piece of important information in the book is that small changes (in things such as habits) should be pursued over time rather than every big change you'd like to have in your life all at once. This means when you want to exercise regularly and get a better body it's important to start small-ish (say about 20 minutes of exercise a day) because if you start big (2 hours of exercise a day) then you won't be able to keep it up infinitely. It is important to create small habits that over time will compound into big habits with visible effects.

The concept is very similar to James Clear's Atomic Habits. Review of Atomic Habits here.

As Hardy explains his concept of compounding effect he also cautions against giving up too easily. It's quite obvious that if you go to the gym twice or eat one less meal once (if you're trying to lose weight) you won't immediately see the benefits. The same goes for writing. If you want to write a book, write 500 words on two days, then give up because you don't have a book yet, your whole endeavour is somewhat pointless. If, however, you keep going to your desk and you keep adding words, 500 words a day will eventually stack up, and in less than a year your novel of 100k word will be finished (as finished as a first draft usually is in any case). At the start of any endeavour you don't want to burn yourself out with either exercise (2 hours a day) or writing 9000 words a day (been there done that) and then not have the energy to finish at all. If you're just starting out it's fine to write 100 words a day. Or 200. And maybe exercise only for 20 minutes or only do 10 push-ups instead of the 100 you're yearning to do (crazy folks!).

You can obviously increase the amount of x you do once you get better at it. If you start small you can up the ante after some time: If you're used to writing 200 words a day it's much easier to make the jump to 300 and later 500. In no time you'll be writing those elusive 2000 (or even 5000/10.000) words a day.

However. The compound effect does not only refer to creating good habits but also how the small little tasks you do every day (conscious or not) make up your bad habits. This could be for example eating a piece of chocolate every day after lunch because you crave it (I usually crave something sweet after lunch). It doesn't matter much on one day, but if you do it every day, it has the same effect as writing 500 words a day. After a while it will become a detriment to your health. This is why Hardy also talks about how to break bad habits. He suggests to write down your habits in a list in order to easily see what you could 'drop' so to speak. An example he gives is saving more money than usual. How can you see where you're spending money unnecessarily?

You are to write down every single thing you spend money on during the week.

A cup of coffee at Starbucks? A candy bar from the shop to treat yourself after work? That's a few dollars right there you can save if you know about them. And in a week, or month, if you buy these things regularly, the amount you can save instead of spend will exponentially increase. The same goes for calories when you're trying to lose weight. Are you actually eating more than you need? Tracking your habits will tell you exactly WHERE you can change your behaviour to go from loss (for example of money by spending on 'little things' or loss of health by eating too many 'little unhealthy things') to gain.

The same loss goes for accumulating knowledge (in the news) that you will not use and which therefore goes to waste. Ask yourself: Do you really need to watch/read the news three times a day? How much of 'useless' knowledge are you gaining this way? Wouldn't it be better to spend the time to read up on information you can actually put to use (perhaps a book on weight loss/nutrition/personal finance/other hobbies you have long been interested in)?

Hardy also maintains that as you're doing all these little things to improve yourself it's also important not to be discouraged. As with anything you do there will be setbacks. If after two months of training at the gym or writing on the novel you still don't have that thin stomach or the complete novel, it's easy to become lazy. It takes a lot of time to obtain significant results. (Here the old adage comes into play, doesn't it? 'Nothing worth having comes free'.) You're guaranteed to want to quit at some point (can confirm this from personal experience with both exercise and writing!), but then you must become the proverbial tortoise and soldier on. Slow and steady wins the race. You put your head down and you take one step at a time. One scene at a time. One minute of exercise at a time.

I hope you enjoyed this review. If you'd like to check out Hardy's book on account of this review it's probably best to buy it at Amazon (am still not affiliated with them). The Kindle ebook is somewhere around $7 and from the audio book it sounded like a fairly easy read. Although if you've already bought James Clear's Atomic habits it might not be as relevant for you any more.

WriteBot.

Review of the Japan exhibition in Amsterdam (Tropenmuseum)

Hey everyone!

Today's post will be fun because I had a lot of fun today even though the exhibition (in the title) wasn't really great.

Firstly I biked about 60km from where I live to Amsterdam (that's to and from). That's always pretty fun (not being sarcastic!). Secondly I went to a Japan exhibition in a place called Tropenmuseum.

The exhibition can be pretty much summed up in one sentence: A nerd's bedroom has more Japan-related items than the exhibition.

It's also only about the size of five nerd's bedrooms poorly utilized. The collection is very small.

Let's go room by room (actually not sure if 'section' doesn't fit better):

Room/Section 1: a meagre collection of a few comics and three gaming consoles where you could play some weird-ass bad graphics fighting game and a drumming game (you could play the drums with a stick and it would be translated into something or other on the screen). Also a big screen on which random Japanese songs were played

Room/Section 2: about four man-sized dummies wearing weird but colourful dresses, a 12+ section that should really have been 18+ and was definitely NSFW (also included tentacle pr0n), a small, ugly robot that spoke poorly about stuff and where you could interact by pressing buttons on its screen, and a sort-of robot-like statue in silver plastic that I don't know the purpose of.

Room/Section 3: Another huge screen with intros/scenes from weird films, a 12+ horror section that at the moment of my being there showed something from Godzilla, some figurines (you know the small ones from various popular series?). The coolest thing about this room/section was probably the life-size samurai statue in full armour with two wooden swords and the samurai sword with authenticity certificate (although this was only a blade and lacked a handle and was also encased in glass so it felt like looking at a simple knife).

Room/Section 4: some scrolls and paintings, at the end of the exhibit walls that looked like they were made of instant noodles (not sure if on purpose - it wasn't really obvious enough - or if that's just how it always looks). Inside these noodle-walls was some pottery. It looked like someone tried to set up a Japanese tea ceremony except there was no teapot/cups so they had to stack bowls instead. This was simply a stack of bowls and on two or three other pedestals had been placed more bowls.

As you can tell from the rooms the exhibition severely lacked:

A tea ceremony set (what was up with the random bowls in section 4 I will never understand) or even just a single teapot with Japanese style painting on it

Kintsugi (art of fixing of broken ceramics by sealing cracks/putting it back together with gold)

Chopsticks (you could argue those aren't 'typically' Japanese as they're used elsewhere as well... but if you're going to explain Japanese culture then maybe eating habits should be a big factor)

Instant Ramen (???) or ANYTHING at all food related

Kimonos/Yukata's/etc. (there was only a small paragraph on some plaque without even a picture explaining this traditional wear)

Geta (Japanese sandals)

The onsen culture

Cherry Blossoms

And so on and so forth. The exhibition was therefore quite disappointing to me. It was the bare minimum of Japanese pop culture (comics and animations - and then not even that fully 'explained'), a paragraph on a single wall why robots are so popular/important (apparently it's because they have a soul according to Shintoism), figurines, a samurai in armour with swords, and some scrolls and paintings.

I know nothing new about Japan that I (and probably most people) didn't before.

Another huge letdown was the food corner. This of course was a part of the whole museum (there were other exhibits which were equally tedious as the Japanese so I won't get into them) but I kind of hoped there would be SOME Japanese or special food as they promised on their website. According to the website you could get tasty treats from different parts of the world. According to the actual menu you have the choice between a ham and cheese toast and some lemon cake (and in the lemon cake cylinder was a literally a half moon end of cut cake because apparently they didn't care to remove the leftovers they couldn't sell but just left them in there).

I would personally not recommend anyone to visit it. It's a much better choice to wait until March/April for the next ComicCon if you want a nerdy Japanese experience. (That being said I also plan to visit TomoFair in January because I've never been - and they have food!)

Thirdly I biked back in the rain (but that was also quite enjoyable - still no sarcasm here - and I had bubble tea before I left so no complaints there).

WriteBot wishes you a good night/day. Cheers!