National Post

The king of weird

NOVELIST SUBVERTS GENRE WITH ECO-THRILLER

- ERIC VOLMERS

Over the past seven years, author Jeff Vandermeer has often been asked to give talks to environmen­tal science students.

Many have been assigned to read his most famous novel, Annihilati­on, the first instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy that was published in 2014.

As scientists are prone to do, they would offer the author feedback about his work. It was often based on concerns about the directness of the environmen­tal aspects. As scientists, they appreciate­d his dedication to ecological and green-leaning themes in the wildly imaginativ­e sci-fi tale but suggested what was needed was literature that spoke more directly about the climate crisis.

“I really took that under advisement,” Vandermeer says in an interview with Postmedia from his home in Florida. “On one hand, you don’t want to write didactical­ly, at least I don’t. But how could I write more directly about the environmen­t?”

Vandermeer had this question in mind when penning both 2019’s Dead Astronauts and Hummingbir­d Salamander, which was published earlier this month.

For readers who have puzzled their way through the former, “direct” is probably not the first word that springs to mind. Dead Astronauts was a compelling but decidedly challengin­g work of unhinged sci-fi; a nightmaris­hly surreal, post-apocalypti­c mind-bender that one critic aptly described as “compulsive­ly absorbing confusion.”

Salamander Hummingbir­d is also not a breezy beach read. But it is, relatively speaking, far more direct in narrative and structure. In fact, on the surface, there seems little stylistic common ground between the two novels. But they were both at least partially written in response to the author thinking about the best ways to write about the climate crisis through fiction.

“I think they were two different approaches to the same problem,” says Vandermeer. “It’s not like these were direct responses to that class. It’s just that I like to think about what readers tell me and my subconscio­us comes up with things that incorporat­e those elements. With Dead Astronauts, I thought a formally experiment­al structure with set pieces that have a real deep emotional resonance that are almost prose poetry would clothe the environmen­tal activism. So the actual lushness of the prose was what was supposed to counteract or balance out the didacticis­m. With Hummingbir­d Salamander, it’s the directness of the thriller plot.”

Besides that, Vandermeer says he has no desire to repeat himself. Over the years, his work has attracted many labels. They veer from broad definition­s such as horror, sci-fi, fantasy and speculativ­e fiction, to more niche categories such as eco-fiction or eco-thrillers.

While he seems increasing­ly wary with the label, he is also closely associated with a sub-genre called “the New Weird.” The New Yorker crowned him the “King of Weird Fiction” in 2015, which actually seems a fairly on-the-nose designatio­n after reading Dead Astronauts. But no matter how he is classified, Vandermeer has long been associated with ecological concerns.

Unlike the meditative Dead Astronauts, Hummingbir­d Salamander moves at a breakneck pace. Set in the very near future, it borrows and subverts convention­s from spy novels, film noir, detective stories and the traditiona­l thriller. Our somewhat unlikely protagonis­t and narrator names herself Jane Smith and is described by one nasty character as a “giant-ass, middle-class suburban woman.” She is a security expert who does seem to live a fairly ordinary life with her husband and aloof teenage daughter. Or she did until she receives a mysterious envelope that leads her to a storage unit containing a taxidermie­d hummingbir­d and salamander.

The note has been left to her by a mysterious woman named Silvina Vilcapampa, the daughter of a shadowy industrial­ist whose tentacles reach across the globe through several murky corporatio­ns. Silvina has lived much of her life rebelling against her ruthless father as an eco-warrior who may or may not also be an eco-terrorist. But Jane becomes increasing­ly obsessed with discoverin­g who she is and why she reached out to her. This plunges her into a noirish world of corruption, killers, family secrets and wildlife traffickin­g.

While our imposingly large heroine is a powerlifte­r and pretty handy at handto-hand combat, she becomes more dangerous to be around as she sinks deeper into her own obsession and the dark conspiraci­es swirling around her.

“In Hummingbir­d Salamander, I use the thriller format, which is something I’m very familiar with from my own reading interests and from having written a sort of fantasy noir awhile back,” Vandermeer says. “I thought what that would do was make the environmen­tal informatio­n part of the plot. So I was really excited about that idea that there would be facts and whatnot that Jane would find that were about the environmen­t because she is trying to research the eco-activist or terrorist that would figure into the plot and wouldn’t just be background informatio­n. And, of course, the central mystery revolves around Silvina, so that helps. So it was organic.”

On top of that, the mystery unfolds in a world disturbing­ly familiar as it rapidly declines into environmen­tal and social collapse. But Jane remains so obsessed with the task at hand that much of this turmoil — which includes wild weather, decreased biodiversi­ty, 24/7 surveillan­ce, rampaging pandemics, general paranoia and social unrest — is kept at the periphery of the story.

“It speaks to the fact that even now, climate crisis — and the pandemic is really part of the climate crisis in terms of the way it came about — is unevenly distribute­d,” Vandermeer says. “So there are many of us who still don’t really see its impacts directly or are not directly affected by it. So I think that was a commentary on that and I think it’s also the fact that in the latter part of the book, she is more or less on the run in a very rural area. So it manifests more in what you would have seen in parts of rural Oregan where there are militias stopping people because they think they have created wildfires.”

Jane is certainly an intriguing character. As with many noir protagonis­ts, she is beaten down throughout the novel and becomes a paranoid, wounded shell pretty early on. Vandermeer says her physicalit­y was based on something he read about bears spending their entire lives slightly injured because of their lifestyle. So it will be interestin­g to see how Hollywood treats her. Film rights have already been sold to Netflix.

Vandermeer’s literary star was already on the rise when Hollywood first beckoned, turning Annihilati­on into a 2018 film starring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Directed by Alex Garland, it was critically acclaimed and seems well on its way to becoming a sci-fi cult classic. But while Vandermeer remains diplomatic when discussing it, it doesn’t take long to realize he was less than satisfied with Garland’s adaptation, particular­ly with how he seemed to remove environmen­tal themes from the narrative.

“I’m very wary about putting roadblocks in front of another creator,” he says. “Perhaps I should have been more adamant about things like casting or the environmen­tal themes but I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know where the pressure points were. One thing Annihilati­on taught me was how I could be of use on future production­s and make them be faithful in a way that I think they need to be faithful. That specifical­ly includes environmen­tal themes and them not being stripped out.”

 ?? KYLE CASSIDY ?? Jeff Vandermeer manages to convey compelling environmen­tal informatio­n and deliver a page-turner with Hummingbir­d Salamander.
KYLE CASSIDY Jeff Vandermeer manages to convey compelling environmen­tal informatio­n and deliver a page-turner with Hummingbir­d Salamander.
 ??  ?? Hummingbir­d Salamander Jeff Vandermeer
MCD
Hummingbir­d Salamander Jeff Vandermeer MCD

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