SPECIAL TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with Annihilation, the Nebula Award-winning novel that reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world (Kim Stanley Robinson).Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death.In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeers Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X deliversthey discover lifeforms that surpass understanding. But its the secrets they carried across the border with them that change everything.