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asked
Jeff VanderMeer:
Do you find that Area X creeps into your daily encounters (especially with nature)? I can't help but be infiltrated by the weirdness, the slimed insidiousness, the near omnipresence of Area X. Anytime I see a rabbit bound into the ivied brush, I shudder. Do you shudder from your own creation?
Jeff VanderMeer
Good question. To be honest, I love the wilderness and although sometimes you'll have to jump over an alligator or figure out to do when a wild boar charges you, or get stalked by a panther...all of which raise your heart rate, I wouldn't trade it for anything. But, I must admit there are weird moments, mostly because your mind plays tricks. Like, hiking for the first time in Australia, I saw a flash of brown and my mind said "deer"--and out hopped a huge kangaroo. My brain kind of froze for a moment, because the expectation was something else entirely. But I also see the spiritual in nature and find it very soothing, very calming. There truly is beauty in places we think of as desolate but that are actually teeming with life.
More Answered Questions
Jake Chambers
asked
Jeff VanderMeer:
What did you think about "The Man Who Had No Eyes" in City of Saints and Madmen in the the mass market paperback edition NOT being encyphered (because the change of format had shifted things and would have required recoding the piece)? Do you think the book lost something with that decision, or do you think most readers wouldn't have bothered to solve the code in the first place?
Christopher Walborn
asked
Jeff VanderMeer:
Authority has two sections that seem to be a nod to Roadside Picnic: the "Maybe they called it a holiday retreat" passage on pg 37 recalls the passage from which the novella gets its name, and the image of military vehicles on pg 189 echoes an image from Stalker. Were these conscious nods? There were also echoes Lem's Solaris. Are these Eastern European writers touchstones for you? I'm looking forward to September!
David
asked
Jeff VanderMeer:
You pull off a very tricky thing in The Southern Reach by making a story where relatively small events bloom, over the course of the book, into much creepier horrors *interiorly,* with characters who do a lot of analysis and rumination. How do you maintain so much tension under a quiet surface? And what authors have you drawn from in doing it?
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