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Jeff VanderMeer

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United States

Website

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy

Member Since

May 2009

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NYT bestselling writer Jeff VanderMeer has been called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker for his engagement with ecological issues. His most recent novel, the national bestseller Borne, received wide-spread critical acclaim and his prior novels include the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). Annihilation won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, has been translated into 35 languages, and was made into a film from Paramount Pictures directed by Alex Garland. His nonfiction has appeared in New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and the Washington Post. He has coedited several iconic anthologies with his wife, the Hugo Award winning editor. Other titles include Wonderbook, the worl ...more

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The collapse of the anthropocene is a theme in your works, but they also hold out potential for a transformed human agency. Grotesque shifts still leave behind a residue of the human. Annihilation is on this track with the biologist's contamination. Do these transformations relate to your sense of human (d)evolution? What is gained or lost by leaving behind individual consciousness for something more rhizomatic?

Jeff VanderMeer Thank you for the truly great question, Ali. To me, this is the essential theme of our time, and it's not about giving in or checking out. It's about …moreThank you for the truly great question, Ali. To me, this is the essential theme of our time, and it's not about giving in or checking out. It's about adaptation to what's coming. Of course, I'm coming at it from a kind of fantastical point of view. No matter how I deploy science or specific detail about our real world, I'm still somewhere between the real and the metaphorical in these explorations. In part to get the distance to explore modes of thoughts, and in the absence of being able to imagine being truly not-human, to get as close to that as possible without marginalizing that state of being as horrific.

I suppose I don't see it as leaving behind individual consciousness as being in greater harmony and collusion with the contamination we already experience but that is invisible to us, and to also thereby better understand that we do not in fact stick out from our landscape, but are part of it. This is something we've forgotten over the last centuries, and the farther we get away from understanding this, the farther we get from long-term solutions to questions like...What do we contribute to our biosphere? Why do we privilege human-style intelligence to the exclusion of all else? Why do we see as strengths those things that are actually now weaknesses in ourselves as a sustainable species on Earth?

This doesn't even get to the question of being able to see our environment with a fresh eye--so that we no longer think in terms of being stewards or despoilers but some other philosophy altogether. And this in the context, too, of not bringing with us the old "culture creatures" as Schama puts it in his book Landscape and Memory. That we might see with clear vision but also perhaps with a hint of awe just how thoroughly we live on an alien planet that is full of wonders we're only now beginning to understand. And of which we are at times the most mundane.(less)

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Jeff, do you have any phobias and do you ever incorporate them into your writing?

Jeff VanderMeer My real phobia is cockroaches. Growing up in Fiji, I would sometimes wake up and hear this crackling, shifting sound in my ears. These small cockroach…moreMy real phobia is cockroaches. Growing up in Fiji, I would sometimes wake up and hear this crackling, shifting sound in my ears. These small cockroaches would burrow in there and I'd have to fish them out. So I come by my phobia honestly. Also, I should note that it extends to professional cockroaches, not just amateur ones. We were on a claustrophobic boat trip once in Romania (eventually cut off by the Romanian navy and a man in a dinghy, but that's another story0 and there were rustling boxes under each of the bench seats in the passenger area (which didn't have windows you could open). The translation came back as "professional cockroaches." Boxes and boxes of professional cockroaches, to be used as bait by fishermen. I was as phobic about them as any number of amateur cockroaches. When it comes to cockroaches, I treat all equally. (Except, I really hate the flying ones.)

As for using them in my writing, I did once write a children's story called Erin & the Roach, but it has never been published, and probably shouldn't be published...by anyone.(less)

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Jeff VanderMeer’s books

Average rating: 3.73 · 558,037 ratings · 63,265 reviews · 243 distinct works • Similar authors

	Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1) 3.78 avg rating — 250,579 ratings — published 2014 — 99 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Authority (Southern Reach, #2) 3.54 avg rating — 90,803 ratings — published 2014 — 72 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3) 3.65 avg rating — 69,648 ratings — published 2014 — 67 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Borne (Borne, #1) 3.93 avg rating — 38,097 ratings — published 2017 — 54 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (Southern Reach, #1-3) 3.85 avg rating — 9,592 ratings — published 2014 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hummingbird Salamander 3.25 avg rating — 10,607 ratings — published 2021 — 29 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Strange Bird: A Borne Story (Borne, #1.5) 4.15 avg rating — 7,260 ratings — published 2017 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1) 3.86 avg rating — 7,486 ratings — published 2002 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dead Astronauts (Borne, #2) 3.37 avg rating — 8,287 ratings — published 2019 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author), Jeremy Zerfoss (Illustrator) 4.34 avg rating — 4,022 ratings — published 2013 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Welcome to Tallahassee: November Local Elections Voter Guide

Our picks: Josh Johnson, Kristin Dozier, David O’Keefe

Candidate Recommendation Cheat Sheet:

Mayor: Kristen Dozier

County Commission: Josh Johnson (at-large Group 2), David O’Keefe (District 5), No Vote (District 2)

School Board: Alex Stemle (District 4)

After the resounding reelection of reformer Jeremy Matlow to the Tallahassee city commission in the August primaries, the November general elect

Series by Jeff VanderMeer

Southern Reach (4 books)
by

Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author)

3.71 avg rating — 421,222 ratings

Borne (2 books)
by

Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author)

3.88 avg rating — 53,643 ratings

Ambergris (3 books)
by

Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author)

3.95 avg rating — 14,977 ratings

Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead (2 books)
by

Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author)

3.23 avg rating — 2,160 ratings

Thackery T. Lambshead (2 books)
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Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author) (Editor),

Jeffrey Ford (Goodreads Author) (Contributor),

Rikki Ducornet (Contributor),

Liz Williams (Contributor),

Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author) (Contributor),

Michael Moorcock (Contributor),

Kage Baker (Contributor),

Brian M. Stableford (Contributor),

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3.65 avg rating — 1,549 ratings

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Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day, according to early...

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Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)

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Jul 02, 2019 03:23PM

Quotes by Jeff VanderMeer (?)

“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

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“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

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“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

tags: colonize, madness, reality

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Polls

What will be our July 2018 Wild Card Pick?

Remember, if you vote for a book and it wins, you are implicitly promising to read the book and participate in the discussion (or else the punishment is an ever increasing torrent of GoodReads spam. Er hang on, aren't we getting that already?)

The poll will be open through June 20th. (Note: You can change your vote at any time prior to the closing of the poll.) Discussion will begin on July 15th

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

7 votes, 41.2%

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer

3 votes, 17.6%

Blue Is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

3 votes, 17.6%

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

2 votes, 11.8%

Ray Vs the Meaning of Life by Michael F. Stewart

1 vote, 5.9%

The Bone Mother by David Demchuk

1 vote, 5.9%

17 total votes

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