Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, Ambiguity and Annoyance

Spoilers are in orange to make them difficult to read.    But if you are one of those who like to know NOTHING about a work, then stop here.

This is something of a review or a commentary on Jeff vanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy: Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance, whose third and final book has just been published.

I will know the hand of the sinner that brings forth the strangling fruit of inconclusive fiction. The wretched of the light will stomp mightily on the sinful authors of ambiguous trilogies and send them screaming into the eternal hell of publishing corruption while the worms giggle and chew energetically on the flesh of the accursed author....

VanderMeer has done two things that I enjoy very much in a work of fiction.  First, he has written what is plausibly described as a mystery story, but cleverly obscures what the real mysteries are. Second he has written something that feels like it could be a fantasy novel, or a novel of the supernatural, that is actually science fiction.  As all devoted readers of science fiction know, SF has rules of its own which are different from the genre of fantasy.

I started reading the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance) a year ago without realizing it had not all been published yet, something I swore to never do again after a bad experience in my youth involving Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber. (1)   But having started reading this series and finding it compelling, I ordered books two and three from Kindle and binge read them when they were released.   I was right to suspect that this was going to be a messy ending.   What does messy mean?  It means that many of the mysteries of Area X and the three books of the Southern Reach Trilogy are not resolved by the end of the third book.  In fact, new mysteries are added by the third book extending the cause of anxiety-producing lack of closure.

The worms will dance in the brain of the sinners who fail to resolve important plot points and bring forth the seeds of the annoyed who will jump up and down and never forgive ... 

These are not the real covers, these are alternate covers I found on the Internet, somewhere.

VanderMeer is perfectly happy to spin a narrative all the way up to page 295 of a 300 page book, then throw out some perfectly plausible world-shattering solution that wipes away the mirage of normalcy and in itself poses another dozen or more questions and then stop. Oh, I guess we are done. Some things in life are ambiguous, I can hear him thinking, thats just the way life is. That may be true in life, but in fiction there is more control and we can point the finger of responsibility if we care to, something that is much harder to do in real life.  

None of this would matter except that VanderMeer is very talented and has done an excellent job of creating a fascinating mystery or ten and characters that I care about.   Pretty much all of them are 'fucked with' hard by Area X which may or may not realize or care what it is doing to them.   And the author rather heartlessly leaves truly sympathetic characters as well as sympathetic readers hanging.

The seeds of the annoyed will emit glowing clouds of vengeance that will plotz on the author and cause him/her/it to rue the day....

After a moment of vocal displeasure for the son-of-a-bitch, a series of possible solutions presented themselves to me. Perhaps by carefully rereading the book(s), one can discover clues that resolve seemingly unresolved issues.  Perhaps there is a subtext or structure to what is answered and what is not.  Perhaps some of the questions are more important than others and that this will become clear upon reflection.  

So in other words, on top of the mysteries left apparently unresolved is the new mystery of why he did this. What was he thinking? Is he a sadist?  Is there a sequel planned? Has he been transformed by Area X?  Is he working for them?

Those who have read the trilogy or do not mind spoilers may read a partial list in the notes (2).

But as time has passed (we are in the third or fourth day since the final book was published) and as I reread the first and second books, I realize that there are some answers in descriptions and events previously described but whose significance was not apparent at the time.  I find that I am somehow going ahead with my life in spite of the ambiguity, that I have "accepted" the fact that we are all completely victimized by forces beyond our control and understanding.   

You can read the first few pages at the link below, annotated by the author.

http://lit.genius.com/Jeff-vandermeer-annihilation-chapter-1-annotated#note-3146601

And here is an annotated excerpt of the second novel.
http://lit.genius.com/Jeff-vandermeer-authority-excerpt-annotated#note-3187479

The unknown plant will bring forth the seeds of the dead who will stomp on the fingers of the readers who believed that there is meaning and rational causation in the universe that they can understand but that is not the case.

___________________________________________

Notes

1. When I first read Nine Princes in Amber I am pretty sure it was just a single book.  Then presumably something happened, it got popular, whatever, and a series of sequels started getting published perhaps one per year for a decade.  I was screwed and never did read the final books.

2. The following is an abbreviated list of just some of the issues either left very ambiguous or completely unanswered.

None of the questions or issues are about the specific technologies or “how things work”, although there is a huge amount of mystery there. I am completely willing to accept that somehow they do work.  Some of the questions below may have answers in some form in the book, but its subtle. Other questions could be added to this list.  

Should you care to read the spoilers, remember that most browsers will increase type size with control-+.  Hit that a few times and the following will be readable.

What is Area X trying to accomplish with that part of the Forgotten Coast? In other words, why is the Forgotten Coast there, and whatever replaced it here? What is the purpose of the topological anomaly? What is the crawler doing, what is its purpose, what do the words mean, why are they being written? (There are some clues to this in the third book, not altogether satisfying, but some clues). What is the thing in the sky and why is it so terrifying? What is the significance of the island and the other lighthouse. Is the owl the missing husband? It would seem that Area X can communicate with us if we take the situation in the tunnel/tower and Ghost Bird as communication, which I think it is. So why has it not communicated before? Why only now, possibly also with the cell phone? What is it trying to say? Does the border still exist? Has the entire world been incorporated into Area X? Why did Lowry not transform or did he? What happened to the first expedition that is different from what happened later? Did the S&SB help initiate Area X by somehow stimulating what was trapped and inert in the lens? What is the plan that the director thinks she has with the biologist in the context of the twelfth expedition, and why would the biologist be significant in her plan? Why did the director not transform or did she? What happened when John Rodriquez went through the door? Is he dead? Does anyone really die in this world or are they all available to be cloned later with or without certain memories? What changed when he went through the door? Is Area X now broken? Is Saul/the Crawler dead? When Area X is wherever it is, what is in its place behind the border where the Forgotten Coast used to be? If the entire world is Area X when the border expanded does that mean that it has also been transported to another place, with a mirage to make it think it is still where it was? Why (as in what is the purpose) of transforming everyone and everything? Is it a way of learning about them or interrogating them? Why did the director refuse to help the biologist when she was dying outside the lighthouse? What is it that caused the director to throw herself off the lighthouse to begin with? How do the journals get to the lighthouse, as it seems unlikely that many of the members of the expedition would be able to to put their journals there (given they were dead, or transformed or insane or running for the border).

Second Case Study of Mass Transit in Southern California

We have a second case study here of the mass transit system in Southern California. This time the itinerary was Escondido to Los Angeles, to Culver City, then up to Pasadena and back to Escondido.

As before, the experience was generally quite positive and as before where the system exists all is well. But when you fall off the edge of the different individual systems, when you fail to fit their profile as it were, then you are thrown on the mercies of the normal non-transit transit system of Los Angeles and may God Help You because you are doomed.

It is always important to remember that in Southern California in general and Los Angeles in particular, there is a well defined status system in place that is based on the automobile. Those who do not drive are untouchable, unclean, and are the despised dregs of society who deserve nothing more than a quick death.

But when you are on these new, partial, discontinuous transit lines, then things are pretty good. I used five different train lines on this trip: the NCTD Sprinter, Amtrak, and the Los Angeles Metro Red, Expo and Gold lines.

The Sprinter goes to/from Oceanside/Escondido and it is $2.00 each way and runs every 30 minutes. It is such a surprise to see this train, and it is so much better than what Los Angeles had anywhere in its system until recently.

The Gold line goes from Los Angeles to Pasadena and again it is very nice. I am not sure how often it runs, but often I think. The stations took me very close to where I was going and it even had a place by the curb for people to park temporarily to pick up and deposit passengers.

But getting from the Culver City Station to Beverly Hills requires descending to the brutal, traffic infested nightmare that is Los Angeles in the new century. It took an hour and $25.00 to get about 3.5 miles. What a piece of shit. The whole trip from San Diego to LA costs $26.00, so a cab ride for $25.00 for a few miles is not rational. Nor is the traffic rational.

In other words, if you get stuck in LA without a car, you are fucked.

The final problem is an interesting one and it is not clear to me what they should do about it. The way Amtrak works is that you have exactly two trains southbound to San Diego from Los Angeles, the 7:30 PM and the 10:00 PM. That is it until dawn. The later train arrives in Oceanside at least an hour after the last Sprinter has run inland. We live in the country out here and people go to bed early. The point is that if you need to take a taxi from Oceanside to Escondido it will cost you $70.00 and that is in the middle of the night when there is no traffic.

In other words, all is well until you diverge from their system, and then you should expect to pay through the nose to get home.

Corruption and Degradation in WebGL (revised)

This review was written about a week ago when I was first into my learning curve of javascript, html, dom and webGL.  Well, its a week later and I think that what I was really responding to is / was different than what I thought it was.   Its not about WebGL, its about expectations.   See note at the end of the post.

This is a review on the process of learning Javascript and WebGL. The two are very interconnected and we will start with Javascript and then move to WebGL.

Note, I am not far enough along to have a real opinion about how well WebGL works, because I am spending all my time getting through the learning curve of getting a picture up on the screen. It shows promise, when things work it almost seems magical.

But when you first are learning WebGL you have to get through Javascript so we will start there.

Although Javascript is a little weird, it does grow on you, and there are clever even possibly reasonable solutions to various flaws in the language which, once you get used to their weird syntax, seem to be OK. For example, I am using a variation on the "module" pattern in Javascript and it seems to be working out for me in terms of hiding and keeping internal state of various parts of the program. Furthermore, javascript reminds me a bit of Lisp in its devil-may-care attitude to dynamic memory and its JSON equivalent of an S-Expression. Although initially dealing with Javascript is a problem, in time the problems fade into the background.

The problem is that learning Javascript is something of a pain in the ass, and for the following reasons:

1. Javascript has a specification and a bunch of tutorials, but no serious reference manual or best practices documentation. You are expected to get all that "out on the Internet". Ha.

2. The problem is that each of these tutorials is written by a different person with wildly different skill sets, styles and talent. They are not Kernighan and Ritchie. They are not comprehensive. They are occasionally helpful, they are more often then not incomplete or inaccurate. They are in no way a substitute for a good reference manual.

3. Each of these tutorials by helpful unpaid volunteers uses a different style, and a different set of support packages, all of which are completely incompatible with each other. There is no equivalent to "stdio" in Javascript. One person uses Ajax, another uses Jquery, still another uses something else. These different packages all seem to be useful, ad hoc, mutually incompatible and of wildly varying quality and utility.

4. Learning Javascript is usually intertwined with learning some combination of DOM and HTML, each of which exists in its own versions, varying implementations, and without documentation. Repeat problems of learning Javascript for each of these.

5. Unless you have someone with the knowledge and the time to guide you through this morass, you can count on a very frustrating period and a very time-inefficient process. Its nothing that anyone involved should be proud of. Just because they made a billion dollars at it, does not mean that they did a good job.

But the good news is that, so far at least, in conjunction with a nearly Lisp-like level of interactivity, one can pretty quickly get through the learning curve and onto whatever it is you wanted to do with the language.

But then you get to WebGL and you run into a series of problems which are very related to the ones just mentioned but with a few additional ones to make it all better. Not only is there no reference manual, nor anything close to minimally acceptable reference documentation (a specification is not a reference manual, by the way), but one more time we have the morass of internet tutorials that vary from useful to not, and each of them uses their own support packages for matrix operations and so forth.

But unlike Javascript, with WebGL and all modern graphics APIs, you have to do an awful lot correctly before you can put a cube on the screen. And if you do one of those 30 or 40 things incorrectly, then you will not see a cube on the screen. But each of those 30 or 40 things is badly documented since there is no reference manual, so you are reliant on Internet based tutorials which brings us full-circle on the discussion.

The only way I have found to proceed is to divide and conquer. Which is to work your way through the creation of a working program one module and WebGL call at a time, reverse engineer what the documentation should have been, and then move on.

That takes time.

I am not all that impressed, to tell you the truth.

So now it is a week or so since I wrote the above post.  And I think I was being a little harsh.  Once you get through the learning curve, and get a handle on what documentation that there is, one can become productive.  There are still unsolved riddles but I am able to move around them.   I think that the real problem here, however badly expressed, is one of incorrect expectations.  I expected things to be better, for us to go forward with the best, and not to have to deal with things that are no better designed or documented than what we had 20 years ago.   It is perhaps a let down that we have not come very far in certain ways and that is what I think I was expressing above, without knowing it.  As for the rest, Html, Dom, and even WebGL is fine, if a little weird now and then.