16 December 2019
Part of what makes VanderMeer's weirdness so striking is his ability to create believably strange natural worlds from a place of granular fascination. He's often credited this to his time living in tropical locales, especially Florida. VanderMeer has described images in Annihilation inspired by the state as "ecstatically beautiful," though others may find them startling. His outlook is one that's familiar to me. Growing up in South Florida, I remember seeing the state's overwhelming abundance of swarming, growing, dying, consuming creatures as quotidian: gators and buzzards threatening to snatch small dogs, all the leathery flattened toads in the road with their innards artfully askew.
