‘I woke up and had the whole idea in my head’: returning to Area X with Jeff VanderMeer

After a decade away, Jeff VanderMeer is heading back into Area X. In 2014, the author released all three parts of the Southern Reach trilogy over the span of just a few months, and the series became a breakout hit; the first was even adapted into a Hollywood film from director Alex Garland. Starting with Annihilation and culminating with Acceptance, the books told the story of an abandoned coastal area that had become reclaimed - and forever changed - by a mysterious phenomenon known as Area X and the secret agency attempting to understand and contain it.

The trilogy solidified VanderMeer's particular style of surreal sci-fi and environmental activism, and in the intervening years, he's explored similar themes in novels like Borne, Dead Astronauts, and Hummingbird Salamander. But there were questions that always lingered after Acceptance. And while he had been thinking about a potential new Southern Reach book since 2017, it wasn't until 2023 that all of the pieces fell into place.

That book would turn into Absolution, a prequel that's out on October 22nd. It's split into three parts and largely follows two characters from the original trilogy: Old Jim, a resident of the abandoned village in Area X, and Lowry, sole survivor of the first expedition into the phenomenon. The book is haunting, strange, and disturbingly funny (just wait until you meet the carnivorous rabbits).

Ahead of Absolution's release, I had the chance to talk to VanderMeer about why he had to come back to the Southern Reach saga and how it all came together so quickly.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You wrote Absolution in six months. How does that compare to your typical writing experience?

I've started writing novels later and later, which lets me think about it more because I'm more relaxed about it now. I've realized, the longer I think about something, the more fully formed it is on the page when I write it. I'd been thinking about Absolution since 2017, and then lightning struck on July 31st of last year. I woke up and had the whole idea in my head: the characters; the interplay of the three sections; how they were going to be written. And I just started writing. I didn't stop until December 31st. It was like having inspiration after inspiration. I wrote morning, noon, and night - which is unusual for me. I usually write in the mornings.