Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)

by Jeff VanderMeer

All of us were women this time,

From the beginning, in the first draft, the expedition was composed of four women. I had a fifth character, a linguist, who resisted going–resisted being put on the page. So I left her out and then spent a lot of time figuring out why she hadn’t wanted to go–the answer to that question coming up in book three, Acceptance. As for the lack of descriptions, I address that in this My Bookish Ways interview: “I liked the idea of characters who the reader has to interpret through their actions, interactions, and dialogue—without any anchor of names or physical descriptions. The namelessness along with the lack of physical descriptions tends to embed the characters more into the landscape—the landscape encroaches on them more than it would otherwise, which amplifies the sense of them being totally on their own and isolated.” See also: Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”, although there the names are definitely symbolic. In Annihilation, there is a practical reason for not using names. Image below taken from this interesting article on Kafka’s story. http://johnstoi.web.viu.ca//kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm https://xenoptica.livejournal.com/1587.html