Born and More by Jeff VanderMeer
The first stories and novels by VanderMeer are largely an extension of the “tentacle” universe of Lovecraft, the most recent being eco-horror, a genre in itself. Both of these creative elements met in the most famous passage of this author – trilogy annihilation and .
In a way, all of VanderMeer’s books could be happening in the same vast and horribly broken world. Sometimes it is about the invasion of strangers, hiding in the basement of terribly old ruins where unsuspecting barbarians lived – humans. At other times, individual characters accidentally step into a completely alien reality until they completely lose their way to each other (and home). In Annihilation, a piece of forest suddenly falls under the alien sky, unknown stars and unexplored laws of biology. So far, the crowning glory of all this is the Born ( Borne ).
The narrator of this book lives in a world devastated by pharmaceutical, technological and biochemical companies. He travels through extinct cities, trying to hide from a huge flying bear terrorizing the area. It is treated with genetically modified beetles. At some point, she finds something like a shape-shifting anemone, which slowly becomes the Born One – her mascot, fosterling, friend. Creation evokes tenderness and horror in the recipient, and VanderMeer masterfully combines these two feelings. This is a story from some angles reminiscent of Frankenstein, although we never meet a good doctor who brought a Born One into existence. We cannot even be sure that such a person ever lived – nature has become so distorted in this world that it is budding with the strangest beings.Madd Addam Margaret Atwood. – Agnieszka Czoska
