20 years before the events of Jeff Vandermeer’s Nebula Award winning novel
Annihilation, the first of four books in the Southern Reach series, Absolution serves as a prequel which explores the beginning of a suspicious government biological experiment set in a swampy area. Tallahassee’s own, Vandermeer sets Absolution on the Forgotten Coast. Floridians may know this refers to our panhandle’s widely overlooked shoreline, its namesake. In the distance of the research landscape lies a lighthouse with supernatural qualities. That lighthouse is a fictional representation of its real-life defunct model: the lighthouse at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. This lighthouse is one thread that entwines the prequel with its following books, explaining how it came to be so weird. Having established the area later to become known as “Area X” as based on real landscapes, the Floridian reader can picture its descriptions of murky stretches of swamp/beach combination with ease.
The story follows a group of government-hired operatives that seem to be hiding something, on par with the rest of the experiment. Old Jim, a resident of the small town “Bleakersville” – perhaps a nod to Crawfordville, which surrounds the research area (“Area X”) – finds a research journal washed up in the swamp. It had been heavily redacted, but what Old Jim is able to find out is extremely ominous to say the least. In one of many nods to Annihilation, 2 the uncanny valley becomes the uncanny swamp when a swarm of carnivorous rabbits infiltrates the experiment. The image of the face of a bunny crunching down on a fiddler crab is creepy enough, but then the biologists notice these animals are wearing cameras. That are not theirs, nor the government’s… As far as they know. The hundreds of red rabbit eyes staring into those of the biologists as they are ordered to kill them (with flamethrowers?!) and the uncharacteristic behavior the rabbits display gives them that hair-raising uncanniness. As described by a biologist in the journal: “Did not move or register pain as they burnt and died. Did not try to run. Did not care. Did not. Would not. Could not” (51). The uncanny swamp has many-a-mention in this book. One of the things that stayed in my mind after having read Annihilation years ago was a scene in which a biologist exploring Area X sees a dolphin. This quote, forever haunting me: “As they slid by, the nearest one rolled slightly to the side, and it stared at me with an eye that did not, in that brief flash, resemble a dolphin eye to me. It was painfully human, almost familiar.” (66) The theme of questioning exactly why the animals in Area X are so unsettling is finally explained in Absolution, and it’ll make your skin crawl.
In this prequel, the biologists are tasked with tracking the activities of alligators they had tagged, and this is where things start going south. Without spoiling who or why, let’s just say there’s no lack of death-by-alligator to be seen. As the book progresses, the truth about the alligators becomes even more disturbing as Old Jim and the rest discover what is later referred to as a type of “molt”, a “skin suit”, a “changeling”. With the psychedelic writing this book employs, it gives the reader just enough reasonable doubt to consider the possibility of a real reptilian-person conspiracy. Are these gators really sleeper agents? Or is everyone on the expedition just losing their mind from the Florida heat? A note from an expeditionist in the 3 journal Old Jim found: “To be honest, I cannot now remember when we first took this project on, when we first encountered these subjects. The heat here is abysmal.” (11)
Constantly questioning the validity of what’s presented as reality, and what’s just perceived, the uncanny swamp presents itself as subnatural, leaving the reader to wonder just how much the government knows about this “Area X” and what lies within it. The constant questioning of reality becomes progressively more unhinged, as the language unfurls wildly, just becoming more odd the further you read. The structure of this book had me picturing the vastness of swampland, considering how I would have reacted as an explorer to these hair-raising situations. To answer, I’ll call on my annotations for section 3, the most disjointed, to which I counted seven “[explicative] nah” notes… I’ll let you figure out which parts those were reacting to. If you’re looking for a new book, you like the weird and uncanny, or just want to be seriously freaked out, you’ve got the perfect read.
Caprie Grisham is a Creative Writing major and Sociology minor at FSU. She is from Lakeland, Florida and enjoys literature of all types– but has a soft spot for the Southern Gothic. When not holed up in a late-night study session at Strozier, she enjoys vinyl collecting and re-watching her favorite show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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