Authority is the sequel to Annihilation, and the 2nd book in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The third book is Acceptance. I read Annihilation just over 6 years ago, shortly after the movie came out. It was the rare movie that was better than the book, which was good in itself. After all this time, my friend Luka insisted that I read it. They thought it was better, that it built on the previous volume and took a fascinating left turn, but they acknowledged, it was very slow, and easy to put down, until a certain point where it wasn't.
This was an accurate review, but to be more specific, Annihilation is about the Biologist. If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it; I will need to rewatch it, because perhaps it was made with some knowledge of what was to come--though ironically, according to Wikipedia, Alex Garland did not read the subsequent books, and wrote the screenplay from memory. While some of the finer details diverged from the book (for example in the character of the Psychologist, whom Jennifer Jason Leigh played brilliantly, but could have gone even more nefarious), the spirit of it matched.
In the review of the previous book, much is made of my general disinterest in "genre fiction," workshopping as I was at the time with a cadre of "speculative fiction" writers. I'll leave this discussion out of this review, but it's worth noting--while Authority is in this category, it is a pretty straight mystery/detective story, only looped into the otherworldly feel of its predecessor in the aforementioned final stretch.
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Annihilation is about the Biologist, and Authority is about Control. The main character is named Control. Later in the novel we learn his name is actually John Rodriguez.
Control is brought in to replace the missing Director. The novel takes the form of a bizarre workplace comedy, with Control taking over interrogation of the Biologist, the one major character that is carried forward into this volume. He meets resistance as he attempts to make changes within the organization. There is The Voice, whom he reports to at the end of each day via phone call, whose voice is disguised. There is Grace, the Assistant Director, who throws up the most obstacles for him. There are other employees lower on the totem pole, Whitby and Cheney, both seemingly more friendly to Control, that further detail the mismanagement of the research and efforts at "containment" of the "border."
If this all sounds very vague, that is because it is. Control comes to his new office and finds a plant and a dead mouse in the drawer, which seems to have fed off it, and scrawled poetry of a kind on the wall. He is concerned his office is bugged.
It is clear at least that Grace has problems with him, and the Biologist is something of a shell of her former self, and uncooperative to say the least. I cannot recall the very end to the book Annihilation, but I can remember the very end to the movie rather clearly.
Frankly, it's probably too late to make the movie of Authority--this wasn't Harry Potter, where all the films were scheduled for release in coming years. But it should have been. I haven't read the Harry Potter books, but I was persuaded to watch the movies, and one of them (The Order of the Phoenix) is about bureaucracy. Granted, there is far less "action" in Authority, and it would be a very different film from its predecessor, but from the way it ends it would seem to be a lull of sorts in between the more adventurous first and third volumes.
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This is a character study, for the most part, which ends with certain revelations, both satisfying and not. Control's mother (Jacki), for example, who once worked for the Southern Reach, exists in the shadows of the novel until she finally materializes. His grandfather (Jack) may have worked for them too, or not. His adage, "Don't thank anyone for what you should already have," is echoed in conversation with the Biologist. At one point in his childhood, Control was tricked into grabbing a gun underneath a car seat, after being instructed to look for some loose change:
"Sitting there in the coffee shop after his mother hung up the thought crept in that perhaps his mother's anger abut the gun had itself been a tableau, a terroir, with Jack and Jackie complicit, actors in a scene meant already, at that young age, to somehow influence him or correct his course. To begin a kind of indoctrination in the family empire." (245)
The use of "terroir" is worth noting. This book is written in third person, with a limited first person edge. Control learns the word terroir from Whitby. (As with Annihilation, the reader is also likely to learn new words.) This comes after a "tour" of the border of Area X that Control takes with him and Cheney. Earlier they had shown video of an experiment with rabbits being dispatched to the border, perhaps the primary experiment that had been carried out in a decade or more. They disappear without a trace--or did they all? The book refuses to give any answers until the end, and even then, mysteries remain, to tease out the conclusion to the trilogy.
"'What doesn't it mean?' Whitby said. 'It means the specific characteristics of a place--the geography, geology, and climate that, in concert with the vine's own genetic propensities, can create a startling, deep, original vintage.'
Now Control was both confused and amused. 'How does this apply to our work?'
'In all ways,' Whitby said, his enthusiasm doubled, if anything. 'Terroir's direct translation is "a sense of place," and what it means is the sum of the effects of a localized environment, inasmuch as they impact the qualities of a particular product. Yes, that can mean wine, but what if you applied these criteria to thinking about Area X?'
On the cusp of catching Whitby's excitement, Control said, 'So you mean you would study everything about the history--natural and human--of that stretch of coast, in addition to all other elements? And that you might--you just might--find an answer in that confluence? Next to the idea of terroir, the theories that had been presented to Control seemed garish and blunt.
'Exactly. The point of terroir is that no two areas are the same. That no two wines can be exactly the same because no combination of elements can be exactly the same. That certain varietals cannot occur in certain places. But it requires a deep understanding of a region to reach conclusions.'
'And this isn't being done already?'
Whitby shrugged. 'Some of it. Some of it. Just not all of it considered together, in my opinion. I feel there is an overemphasis on the lighthouse, the tower, base camp--those discrete elements that could be said to jut out of the landscape--while the landscape itself is largely ignored. As is the idea that Area X could have formed nowhere else....although that theory would be highly speculative and perhaps based mostly on my own observations.'" (132-133)
The reader later learns about Control's past, as a domestic terror operative that had been trained in going undercover, and an incident that led to removal from his post and ultimately his installation at the Southern Reach. From there, the book begins to ramp up to its climax, and most of the stray details of the narrative coalesce into a denouement that feels earned. It is after that denouement, however, that the pace quickens further.
So it has a satisfying final act, and ends on a pretty massive cliffhanger, all of which only makes me lament that Jeff VanderMeer wasn't considered J.K. Rowling. I don't doubt a trilogy of films would have been brilliant (given the quality of Annihilation). It's still not too late! Portman may have aged a bit, but couldn't there be a little twist, the way the film of the first book diverged from it, too--that she had aged as if years had passed, not unlike travelers to distant galaxies who experience time differently than on Earth? It could work, it could work, hear me out.
Books are much less expensive to make than films, but I have to believe Natalie would be on board, and maybe Alex Garland, too. Men was not bad, but it was no Annihilation (I didn't see Civil War, not yet at least), though Devs was pretty great (and I had no idea he wrote the novel The Beach, adapted into an infamous Leo DiCaprio movie with a silly video game/drug sequence I've not yet gotten to see). Apparently, he has fallen out of love with film, and will likely not direct another movie (though he is involved in the forthcoming 28 Years Later, after writing 28 Days Later and producing 28 Weeks Later), but I am sure there is another filmmaker out there that would love to finish out the trilogy. Authority is just problematic because it would be odd tonally after Annihilation--the first half of it would need to be treated like a sci-fi version of Office Space--but the mystery elements could make it into a fine noir, and the final sequence is a good payoff. Few things spell box office magic these days, unless based on a comic book, and the movie would not make a lot of money, but it could potentially be revelatory. Maybe Annihilation will just stand on its own forever, but I feel like it still could be so much more, if seen as the opening act in a series. There's always the chance one day, it could be "rebooted" and turned into a 3-season television series. As such, we still have the books, and there are plenty of others that will never be adapted either, and that is fine (even movies are becoming too big of an ask for audiences, to say nothing of the obsolescence of the novel).
Grade: B+
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