 | |
| Author | Jeff VanderMeer |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rodrigo Corral Alycia Rainaud |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | 2019 |
| Publisher | MCD/FSG (US) |
| ISBN | 978-0-374-27680-5 |
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. [1] It was nominated for the Locus Awards Best Fantasy Novel of 2020. [2]
The first half of the novel follows three part-human shapeshifters – Grayson, Moss, and Chen – as they travel through worlds to fight "The Company". Grayson, the leader, is a former astronaut that can see iterations of the future and information about others through a blinded eye. After exploring space and finding no habitable planets and no signs of life, she returns to "The City" and finds it transformed by the company. She flees the city and travels west where she encounters and falls in love with Moss. Moss is a sentient moss that takes the form of a person around her companions, but can shapeshift with ease and split into multiple selves. Together Moss and Grayson decide to return to The City and attempt to save it from "The Company". On the way they run into Chen, a creation of The Company who became disillusioned and horrified at the work he was doing and fled. Chen sees the world in equations and formulas, but is always on the verge of collapsing into a mass of salamanders. The three then set out across multiple timelines and versions of the world to try and stop the company. [3]
The second half of the novel follows a homeless woman, Sarah, as she seeks to understand the journal of Charlie X, a scientist of "The Company". [1]
Dead Astronauts was met with mixed reviews. Many reviewers found the story to be elusive and unclear [4] [5] and the novel to be overstuffed with too loosely linked concepts and character. [6] The same reviewers though found that the loose connections added to the message and themes of the novel. [5]
While there was much criticism a cult following has emerged seeing this novel as a innovative visionary work of climate fiction, as Nina Allen writes, "the author deliberately deconstructs the very concept of familiarity and forces us up against his subject matter in a way that demands we not only engage with it, but recognize its vast importance to our lives and futures.". [7]
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.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction, such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. 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.
The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. The awards have been described by book critics such as The Guardian as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and one of the three most prestigious speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The World Fantasy Award—Anthology is given each year for anthologies of fantasy stories by multiple authors published in English. An anthology can have any number of editors, and works in the anthology may have been previously published; awards are also given out for collections of works by a single author in the Collection category. The Anthology category has been awarded annually since 1988, though from 1977 through 1987 anthologies were admissible as nominees in the Collection category. During the ten years they were admissible for that category they won the award seven times and represented 38 of the 56 nominations.
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.
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."
Margo Lanagan is an Australian writer of short stories and young adult fiction.
Sarah Elizabeth Monette is an American novelist and short story writer, mostly in the genres of fantasy and horror. Under the name Katherine Addison, she published the fantasy novel The Goblin Emperor, which received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
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.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author and puppeteer. Originally a puppeteer by primary trade after receiving a bachelor's degree in art education, she became art director for science fiction magazines and by 2010 was also authoring her first full-length published novels. The majority of her work is characterized by science fiction themes, such as interplanetary travel; a common element present in many of her novels is historical or alternate history fantasy, such as in her Glamourist Histories and Lady Astronaut books.
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.
2312 is a hard science fiction novel by American writer Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2012. It is set in the year 2312 when society has spread out across the Solar System. The novel won the 2013 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an anthology of weird fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
Karin Margareta Tidbeck is a Swedish author of fantasy and weird fiction.
Liz Gorinsky is a publisher and editor of speculative fiction, founder and former publisher of Erewhon Books, a former editor for Tor Books, multiple Hugo Award nominee, and 2017 Hugo Award winner in the category of Best Editor.
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.
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.
Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a 2012 novel by the British author Graham Joyce. A work of speculative fiction, it won the British Fantasy Society's Fantasy Novel of the Year award in 2013, and was nominated for the 2013 August Derleth Award for best Horror Novel, and the 2013 World Fantasy Award for best Novel.
Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction psychological cosmic 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 scientists 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.
Borne is a 2017 novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. It concerns a post-apocalyptic city setting overrun by biotechnology.