 | |
| Author | Jeff VanderMeer |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Southern Reach Trilogy |
| Genre | Fantasy, Horror, Science fiction |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | September 2, 2014 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 341 |
| ISBN | 978-0-374-10411-5 |
| Preceded by | Authority |
| Followed by | Absolution |
Acceptance is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the last in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy . It was released in the US on September 2, 2014. [1]
Acceptance jumps around in time and between the perspectives of several characters from the first two novels in the Southern Reach Trilogy.
In the years before Area X, Saul Evans — the Lighthouse Keeper introduced in Annihilation — builds a friendship with nine-year-old Gloria, the girl who becomes the psychologist of the 12th expedition and the former Director of the Southern Reach. While maintaining the lighthouse (the same one found in Area X), Saul is frustrated by the constant visits of Henry and Suzanne, two members of the Séance & Science Brigade (S&SB) who perform unknown experiments involving the lighthouse's lens. Later, a fire breaks out on nearby Failure Island, destroying S&SB's headquarters. While cleaning the grounds, Saul sees a mysterious flower of light on the floor. As he attempts to pluck it, it stabs his finger. Saul begins to have vivid nightmares: he imagines walking into his lighthouse only to discover it has transformed into the Tower. When he awakens, Saul begins reciting the sermon written by the Crawler on the walls of the Tower. Over time Saul becomes increasingly obsessed with the sermon.
Gloria leaves to be with her father just before Saul returns to the lighthouse at night and sees a glowing light emanating from the trapdoor beside the lens. Saul enters the light. When he awakens, he finds Henry and Suzanne's bodies beside him. However, a doppelgänger of Henry arrives and confronts Saul. The two eventually fall off the side of the lighthouse. Saul survives, but as he attempts to escape, visions of Area X flood his mind. Saul finally stops running, having accepted defeat. A tunnel, later referred to by expedition members as a tower, forms at the site where Saul falls. Saul becomes the Crawler which scrolls the organic words which descend the Tower.
The second timeline describes Gloria's initial acceptance into the Southern Reach and her promotion to Director. She has a strained relationship with Lowry, the only survivor of the first expedition and the man responsible for organizing each subsequent journey into Area X. Without alerting anyone at the Southern Reach, Gloria secretly crosses the border into Area X with Whitby, a scientist working for the Southern Reach. She visits her childhood home, encounters the Crawler in the Tower, and visits the lighthouse. While Whitby is upstairs, he apparently (unseen to the Director) struggles with his duplicate and says that he killed it just before she rushed up to find him bruised and scratched, with no sign of the Dead Whitby. The Director finds a backpack Whitby swears belonged to Dead Whitby containing the cell phone and plant first mentioned in Authority .
Upon her return, the Director refuses to relate her experiences to Lowry. Instead, she begins planning the 12th expedition and interviews the biologist for the mission. It is then revealed that the Director has terminal cancer. She, therefore, decides to join the 12th expedition in the hopes of visiting Area X one last time. The Director also learns that the S&SB may have been involved in the creation of Area X. When she confronts Lowry about this, he refuses to admit it. Finally, the Director pulls out a photo of the cell phone she found in Area X, arguing that it belonged to Lowry and was used to communicate with Area X. The Director believes that Area X is trying to communicate with Lowry because it has been found in such a serendipitous way and considering the strange goings-on surrounding it after it is found. Lowry eventually admits the phone belonged to him and storms off.
The Director's story ends with her embarking on the 12th expedition as the psychologist. In her pocket is a letter to Saul Evans, which she hopes to give him when they meet again. However, as seen in Annihilation , the Director dies before Saul can receive her message: an apology for never returning to the lighthouse as a child, thanks for his friendship and guidance, and a promise always to remember him as the Keeper of the Light.
Control and Ghost Bird enter Area X through a previously unknown portal. They wander in the wilderness before arriving at Failure Island, where they encounter Grace. Grace reveals why Area X grows so quickly: time moves faster inside the border during specific "cosmic" shifts that seem to happen randomly. Although Control and Ghost Bird have only been gone a few weeks, Grace has been waiting on the Island for three years. This also accounts for how some expeditions never return, as they may have been trapped there for years and eventually died. Grace also shows them the biologist's "Last Will and Testament," detailing what happened to her after the events of Annihilation: the biologist arrived at the Island in search of her husband, believing that the man who returned from the 11th expedition was a copy of her husband generated by Area X. The biologist instead encounters an owl which becomes her companion for the next 30 years. The owl behaves strangely compared to typical owl behavior. Over time she comes to believe that the owl is the form that her husband took after he was changed by Area X. She has held off the takeover by the brightness, using pain as a way for her body to resist it, and believes that her eventual change will likely be more radical, perhaps into something like the moaning creature. Eventually, the owl dies, and the brightness that afflicts the biologist swallows her whole.
Grace announces that the biologist is returning to the Island. Ghost Bird — herself a copy of the biologist generated by Area X — encounters her original self, transformed into a staggeringly immense, hyper-sentient, whale-like creature, unbound by physical law and covered with eyes. Control, Ghost Bird, and Grace decided to return to the Tower, where Ghost Bird encounters the Crawler. When she touches it, she sees the birth of Area X as if it is its own universe. Grace shoots at the Crawler and accidentally hits Ghost Bird.
Meanwhile, Control, overcome by the brightness, is transforming into something nonhuman, a loping creature with paws. Maimed by the Crawler and close to death, he descends further into the Tower. As he comes closer to the light at the bottom of the Tower, he realizes that it is the flower that pricked Saul and created Area X. He leaps into the light.
Grace and Ghost Bird exit the Tower and head to the border. Ghost Bird is ambivalent about the possible total expansion of Area X but is mindful of Grace and her connection to others outside of Area X. They find the Southern Reach building abandoned. The two continue walking, unsure if Area X is gone or if the border has expanded even further.
On March 15, 2014, BuzzFeed gave an exclusive first look at the cover to Acceptance along with an interview with Jeff VanderMeer. [2] Reviews for Acceptance were for the most part favorable. NPR said that the book "is at different times the best haunted lighthouse story ever written, a deeply unsettling tale of first contact, a book about death, a book about obsession and loss, a book about the horrifying experience of confronting an intelligence far greater and far stranger than our own, and a book about sea monsters." [3] The Guardian called it a potent conclusion to the trilogy [4] while Kirkus gave the work a starred review. [5]
During its opening week, Acceptance was ranked as #16 on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Paperback Trade Fiction. [6] The New York Times wrote a full page review calling the book "pure reading pleasure" and added that "VanderMeer has created an immersive and wonderfully realized world." [7]
Grace Horsley Darling was an English lighthouse keeper's daughter. Her participation in the rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838 brought her national fame. The paddlesteamer ran aground on the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland in northeast England; nine members of the crew were saved.
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.
The Farne Islands are a group of islands off the coast of Northumberland, England. The group has between 15 and 20 islands depending on the level of the tide. They form an archipelago, divided into the Inner Group and the Outer Group. The main islands in the Inner Group are Inner Farne, Knoxes Reef, the East and West Wideopens, and the Megstone; the main islands in the Outer Group are Staple Island, Brownsman, North and South Wamses, Big Harcar, and Longstone. The two groups are separated by Staple Sound. The highest point, on Inner Farne, is 62 feet (19 m) above mean sea level.
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
James Walker was an influential British civil engineer and contractor.
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St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, in Wakulla County, Florida, is one of the oldest wildlife refuges in the United States. Established in 1931 as a wintering ground for migratory birds, it encompasses more than 83,000 acres spread between Wakulla, Jefferson, and Taylor Counties in the state of Florida.
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Gloria Whelan is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist known primarily for children's and young adult fiction. She won the annual National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2000 for the novel Homeless Bird. She also won the 2013 Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction for her short story What World Is This? and the work became the title for the independent publisher's 2013 collection of short stories.
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Monster literature is a genre of literature that combines good and evil and intends to evoke a sensation of horror and terror in its readers by presenting the evil side in the form of a monster.
Annihilation is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the first entry in VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy and follows a team of four women who set out into an area known as Area X, which is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization; they believe they are the 12th expedition, with all previous expeditions falling apart due to disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma.
Authority is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the second in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy. In an interview, VanderMeer stated that, "if Annihilation is an expedition into Area X, then Authority is an expedition into the Southern Reach, the agency sending in the expeditions." It was released in May 2014.
The Southern Reach Trilogy is a series of novels by the American author Jeff VanderMeer first published in 2014—Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. The trilogy takes its name from the secret agency that is central to the plot. In 2013, Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights for the series, and a film adaptation of Annihilation was made with Alex Garland as writer-director. The film was released in 2018.
Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy is a 2014 direct-to-DVD animated comedy horror film, and the twenty-third film in the direct-to-video series of Scooby-Doo films. It premiered on July 27, 2014, at San Diego Comic-Con, and was released on Digital HD on August 5, 2014. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 19, 2014.
Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction psychological Lovecraftian horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac. The story follows a group of explorers who enter "The Shimmer", a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals caused by an alien presence.
Grace Avery VanderWaal is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She is known for her distinctive vocals and has often accompanied herself on the ukulele.
Stargirl is a 2020 American jukebox musical romance film based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Jerry Spinelli that debuted on Disney+. The film explores the tense emotions, non-conformity and self-expression of teenagers in high school, and the exuberance of first love.
The Strange Bird: A Borne Story is a short story written by Jeff VanderMeer and published in 2018. Its genre has been described as being post-apocalyptic, new weird, and climate change fiction. Its main character is a bird-like creature made of biotechnology with some human consciousness inside of her, and it has been thematically interpreted as an analysis of people's relationship with the environment and with animals.