 First edition (US) | |
| Author | Jeff VanderMeer |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rodrigo Corral |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | MCD/FSG (US) Fourth Estate (UK) |
Publication date | April 24, 2017 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 336 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-00-815918-4 |
Borne is a 2017 novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. It concerns a post-apocalyptic city setting overrun by biotechnology. [1] [2]
The novel takes place in the future, in the ruins of a nameless city dominated by a giant grizzly bear called "Mord". The perspective character, Rachel, is a scavenger in the city; she collects various genetically engineered organisms and experiments that were created by "the Company", a biotech firm. One day, while searching in Mord's fur, Rachel discovers a sea anemone-like creature that she names "Borne". [3]
VanderMeer had for a long time considered writing about growing up in the South Pacific, where he lived as a child. One day the image of a sea anemone came to him, along with a hand which he knew belonged to Rachel, that reached out to grab the anemone from the fur of a giant bear. From that image, the rest of the city assembled itself. Mord was influenced by Richard Adams's Shardik , and his never explained ability to fly was inspired by a character in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus . [4]
The novel was highly praised, with The Guardian saying "VanderMeer’s recent work has been Ovidian in its underpinnings, exploring the radical transformation of life forms and the seams between them." [1] Publishers Weekly said the novel reads "like a dispatch from a world lodged somewhere between science fiction, myth, and a video game" and that with Borne Vandermeer has transformed weird fiction into "weird literature." [5] The New Yorker said the novel plunges the reader "into a primordial realm of myth, fable, and fairy tale." [6] Cameron Laux in the BBC labels it one of the most overlooked recent novels, imagining "an ecological utopia where humans' abusive relationship with nature has ended." [7]
In August 2017 VanderMeer released the novella The Strange Bird: A Borne Story . [8] The stand-alone story is set in the same world as Borne but features different characters. [9]
VanderMeer also wrote Dead Astronauts , a stand-alone novel set in the Borne universe which was released on December 3, 2019. [10]
Paramount Pictures has optioned the film rights to Borne. [11]
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.
Thomas Ligotti is an American horror writer. His writings are rooted in several literary genres – most prominently weird fiction – and have been described by critics as works of philosophical horror, often formed into short stories and novellas in the tradition of gothic fiction. The worldview espoused by Ligotti in his fiction and non-fiction has been described as pessimistic and nihilistic. The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction."
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either skews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the label of New Weird, which continues into the 21st century.
The New Weird is a literary genre that emerged in the 1990s through early 2000s with characteristics of weird fiction and other speculative fiction subgenres. M. John Harrison is credited with creating the term "New Weird" in the introduction to The Tain in 2002. The writers involved are mostly novelists who are considered to be part of the horror or speculative fiction genres but who often cross genre boundaries. Notable authors include K. J. Bishop, Paul Di Filippo, M. John Harrison, Jeffrey Ford, Storm Constantine, China Miéville, Alastair Reynolds, Justina Robson, Steph Swainston, Mary Gentle, Michael Cisco, Jeff VanderMeer and Conrad Williams.
Veniss Underground is a 2003 fantasy novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, following the adult lives of three different protagonists across a short period of time in the decadent, surreal city of Veniss, which is situated above a vast underground labyrinth of hovels and mines ruled over by the amoral crime lord Quin.
Weird West is a term used for the hybrid genres of fantasy Western, horror Western and science fiction Western. The term originated with DC's Weird Western Tales in 1972, but the idea is older as the genres have been blended since the 1930s, possibly earlier, in B-movie Westerns, comic books, movie serials and pulp magazines. Individually, the hybrid genres combine elements of the Western genre with those of fantasy, horror and science fiction respectively.
Shriek: An Afterword is a fantasy novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. Published in 2006, Shriek is set in the fictional city of Ambergris, a recurring setting in VanderMeer's work. The novel was written over a period of eight years, owing in part to what the author said, "[some scenes that are] very personal."
Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.
The Ammonite Violin & Others is Caitlin R. Kiernan's sixth short story collection. The twenty stories included first appeared in issues 1-23 of Sirenia Digest, Kiernan's monthly digest of weird and dark fiction. It was published by Subterranean Press in July, 2010. The cover features an illustration by Richard A. Kirk, who has provided artwork for several of Kiernan's other collections. Jeff VanderMeer wrote the introduction. The collection was nominated for both the World Fantasy Award and Shirley Jackson Award, and appeared on the cover of Publishers Weekly.
Finch is a fantasy novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, his third set in the Ambergris universe. Written in the noir style of detective novels, it stands alone, while referencing characters and events from the earlier City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an anthology of weird fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
Annihilation is a 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is the first in a series of three books called the Southern Reach Trilogy. The book describes a team of four women who set out into an area known as Area X. The area is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization. They are the 12th expedition; the previous expeditions have been fraught with disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma. The novel won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for best novel.
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.
Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction psychological horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, 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.
Laura Miller is an American journalist and critic based in New York City. She is a co-founder of Salon.com.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 is an anthology of science fiction and fantasy short works edited by Mercedes Lackey. It was first published in trade paperback by Pyr in May 2016.
Alistair Rennie is a Scottish author of weird fantasy and horror fiction, known for his weird fantasy novel, BleakWarrior, published by Blood Bound Books in 2016. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has lived for ten years in Bologna, Italy. He is also the creator of the dark ambient music project Ruptured World which released its first album, Exoplanetary, on the dark ambient music label Cryo Chamber in August 2018. Ruptured World has since released several albums, including Archeoplanetary, Interplanetary, Shore Rituals and Xenoplanetary.
Submergence is the second novel by the Scottish novelist J.M. Ledgard. Alternately a love story, a spy story, and an exploration of the ocean, Submergence was published in 2011 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and in 2013 by Coffee House in America. There are numerous translations including in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, and Thai.
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.
Dead Astronauts is a 2019 science fiction novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is a sequel to Borne but features different characters and a new narrative. It was nominated for the Locus Awards Best Fantasy Novel of 2020.