The Southern Reach Story: Continued Through Annotations at Genius.com
It’s been a great couple of weeks for the Southern Reach trilogy. The Area X hardcover is officially out and the series has made the year’s best lists for the Huffington Post, Bookriot, Amazon, Kirkus, and a host of others. FSG also has a great splash page for the hardcover that includes this rather wonderful flipbook of links and articles related to the novels. I'm also doing a Reddit AMA at 3pm today EST.This week, we’re also teaming up with Genius.com for a contest that could lead to you winning a cool Southern Reach full-color chapbook or even the hardcover itself, signed and personalized. Details here.The contest accompanies my annotations for the beginning of Acceptance. Although I've annotated Southern Reach text at Genius.com before, this time there’s a difference!I’ve gone a little metafictional this time, a little bit "found object," too. What will you uncover?
--Brief entries from Whitby Allen's personal journal.--Transcripts of interviews and other “evidence” pertaining to the Southern Reach and Area.--Reports from the Séance & Science Brigade.--Southern Reach images, some of which you may not have seen before.--Excerpts/fragments from Southern Reach science division lead Mike Cheney's shambolic novel-in-progress "Control," in which he tries to make sense of the new director of the Southern Reach...although I think he's really trying to make sense of his own experiences.
But that's not all! I invited Tom Abba from the U.K. to create a "shadow page" of annotations that depict what might've happened to Southern Reach staff left behind at the end of Authority. Can you find the shadow page? Peruse my annotations and you might just stumble upon it. (Abba is a director of ‘Circumstance’, which develops methods to link physical books to codependent digital content.)Finally, author Nicholas Rombes will be adding annotations later this week. Rombes is the author of Ramones from the 33 1/3 series and the just-released (and highly recommended) novel The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing. He will be addressing the found footage from various expeditions.Of course, you can join in the experience by signing up at Genius.com and adding your own annotations.Go check it out--and don’t forget about the contest.(Thanks to Chris Urie for bunny photo.)