Latest / The Book-Watchers / 89. Book is way different. (Southern Reach Series: Annihilation)

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89. Book is way different. (Southern Reach Series: Annihilation) · The Book-Watchers

0:05
Speaker 1: Beyond its ounds. Anyway, Hi, welcome to book watchers. I
0:30
Speaker 1: was going somewhere and again, I'm never prepared. I never
0:34
Speaker 1: are that.
0:35
Speaker 2: You know, that's probably why we're not doing so well,
0:36
Speaker 2: because we don't. We're not good at at these intros.
0:40
Speaker 1: I mean that goes for any of them, though, Like
0:45
Speaker 1: it's honestly just marketing. It's just marketing.
0:48
Speaker 2: It's literally just literally every opening for book Watchers is
0:51
Speaker 2: us talking about how we're so bad at it.
0:53
Speaker 1: That's mean, you know, people can relate, relatable, you know, relatable.
1:01
Speaker 1: I'm Devin, and over there is I'm not gonna do it.
1:06
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.
1:10
Speaker 1: It's Pooky. It's pooky. It's Jacob right over there, right
1:14
Speaker 1: over there. Look at that, you look at that, Look
1:17
Speaker 1: at that beautiful man. Yeah, gentlemen, he's single.
1:23
Speaker 2: I am. But don't call me Pooky.
1:26
Speaker 1: I'll call you where the funk I want.
1:29
Speaker 2: Than for you because I'll tell you pooky. But you'll
1:33
Speaker 2: keep calling me pooky.
1:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're Pooky. No, you're pooky. I'm so sorry.
1:39
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
1:41
Speaker 2: You're not sorry enough.
1:44
Speaker 1: Ill me. Uh, you're beautiful. You're amazing, You're stunning. You're
1:49
Speaker 1: Linda Vanelizi you're a model. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
1:53
Speaker 2: Anyway, Yes, my name I'm Jacob. Hello, how I who
1:56
Speaker 2: are you? High British guys, guys.
2:00
Speaker 1: From Oh that's right, you have a thing. Oh wow,
2:04
Speaker 1: not that.
2:05
Speaker 2: It's not I'm not it's not a thing. I'm just
2:07
Speaker 2: giving a special shout out for for the majority of
2:09
Speaker 2: our listeners overseas. Hm hm at least, like I'll ask
2:15
Speaker 2: you that. Well, we'll check that later. But last time
2:17
Speaker 2: we checked it was we have a lot of subscribers
2:19
Speaker 2: and listeners from like Whales and somewhere in the UK.
2:25
Speaker 2: What stood out to me was that in particular was
2:27
Speaker 2: Whales and yeah. I was just like, oh oh.
2:31
Speaker 1: Oh hello, yeah yeah, uh huh. I know, why fucking
2:37
Speaker 1: freak it should be talking. Yeah, you really shouldn't, because I.
2:44
Speaker 2: Mean you're over here getting conquered by Viking.
2:51
Speaker 1: That's a sensitive That's that's correct, it's correct. But Viking
2:58
Speaker 1: is so adorable.
3:00
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Yeah.
3:02
Speaker 1: Anyway, if you look at the description below, you can
3:04
Speaker 1: see a linky link that'll take you to the link
3:08
Speaker 1: trade the Boid Productions page. God my god, they'll take
3:13
Speaker 1: you to the other podcast and the Afoid Productions family podcasts,
3:16
Speaker 1: as well as the YouTube and other stuff. So all
3:20
Speaker 1: those links will be down in the description below. Secondly,
3:23
Speaker 1: happy Halloween. When it's ups going up, it is Halloween,
3:29
Speaker 1: Happy Halloween. Yes, it'll be all Yes, am I tripping?
3:36
Speaker 2: It's going going up next week or the week after.
3:40
Speaker 1: Okay, this week is for Oh no, yeah, it's Halloween.
3:44
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, that's Halloween. Happy Halloween. Have a
3:48
Speaker 1: Halloween or November first? Yeah, yes, but it bleeds in,
4:01
Speaker 1: It bleeds in. It's a holiday of our ancestors, Jacob. Well,
4:07
Speaker 1: mine's on the sturdy first, yours is on the first.
4:11
Speaker 1: But still for those of you who don't know, get
4:15
Speaker 1: in the know, because Halloween is an Irish holiday or
4:20
Speaker 1: Celtic if you want to get more specific. Yes, I
4:23
Speaker 1: know you're like, what what? Yeah, no, we didn't make
4:26
Speaker 1: you don't. The original tradition is not made pumpkin jack
4:29
Speaker 1: o' lanterns. You make jacque lands out turnips. I feel
4:33
Speaker 1: like I have an episode on that somewhere on Yes,
4:37
Speaker 1: maybe something Halloween. Spoogogcallapse, I think it was Spoockallapse actually.
4:40
Speaker 2: It was I was I was part of that because
4:44
Speaker 2: I remember where we did all about Mars a long.
4:49
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, we haven't had some on that. You
4:52
Speaker 1: want to learn the history of Halloween and Day of
4:54
Speaker 1: the Dead and all that fun stuff because you know,
4:58
Speaker 1: spirits are alive anyway. So today we're done with Obviously
5:05
Speaker 1: we're done with Wheel of Time. Solidary tier for Jacob
5:10
Speaker 1: doing a whole taking a whole year to read all
5:14
Speaker 1: these books.
5:15
Speaker 2: It took me nine months. It did not take me
5:16
Speaker 2: a year.
5:17
Speaker 1: Okay, almost took you a year.
5:20
Speaker 2: But yeah, real Time Will Times fourteen books. Loved them, Glad,
5:26
Speaker 2: I'm glad. I'm done with them. Now I go on
5:28
Speaker 2: to other other books. He used to read a couple
5:33
Speaker 2: of TJ.
5:33
Speaker 1: Kloon books. Y.
5:36
Speaker 2: I kind of was like, I want to take a
5:38
Speaker 2: break from that. So now I'm reading other books.
5:43
Speaker 1: And today I'm going to be telling you all about
5:47
Speaker 1: a book. So I'm going to be starting the Southern
5:50
Speaker 1: Reach trilogy or that. People probably know the first book,
5:56
Speaker 1: Annihilation because of the movie. So this book, this series
6:00
Speaker 1: is obviously the trilogy. Well not anymore, because a fourth
6:05
Speaker 1: book is coming out by the time this episode comes out.
6:09
Speaker 1: The fourth book would already be out, but I'm gonna
6:12
Speaker 1: talk about that one too.
6:14
Speaker 2: So coming out that's basically coming out like a couple
6:17
Speaker 2: of weeks from now right or.
6:19
Speaker 1: On the on the twenty second of October. So by
6:21
Speaker 1: the time this episode comes out, the fourth one will
6:23
Speaker 1: already be out, but I'm gonna be talking about that series.
6:28
Speaker 1: So I'm starting off with Annihilation, and then the next
6:32
Speaker 1: three weeks after that probably that honestly probably gonna be
6:35
Speaker 1: like the next month. One yeah, one, two, three, four,
6:42
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we'll be talking about the this series until
6:48
Speaker 1: probably the twenty eighth Thanksgiving aka Chakeout's birthday. So uh oh,
6:58
Speaker 1: come on, it's your birth You're gonna see me someone
7:02
Speaker 1: randomly manifest into your house. Don't you care anyway? Oh, bitch,
7:09
Speaker 1: you know I'm going to We're going. I Am going
7:12
Speaker 1: to manifest into your house. We're gross. If you won't
7:14
Speaker 1: be there or not, I'm be like, hi, you home, cool,
7:16
Speaker 1: knock knock, Let me and bitch, happy thirtieth birthday, old fart.
7:22
Speaker 1: Do you really think I'm gonna let you have a
7:26
Speaker 1: thirtieth birthday and not me be there cracking jokes because
7:31
Speaker 1: you crack jokes at me, Old time being thirty two
7:34
Speaker 1: Go's for the Love. So say we're gonna talk about Anihilation. Now,
7:39
Speaker 1: this book was by Jeff vander Vandermir, Yes I say
7:44
Speaker 1: his name, Jeff Vandermir, and it was released in February
7:48
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Now this man, he released the trilogy all
7:55
Speaker 1: in the same year, the first three books all in
7:58
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, which I'm like girl pop off because he
8:02
Speaker 1: released the first one in February and then the second
8:06
Speaker 1: one was released in May, and the last one was
8:09
Speaker 1: released in September, and then of course he waits ten
8:13
Speaker 1: years to release the fourth one, Confusion. So I'm curious
8:18
Speaker 1: to see what the fourth one's gonna be about. Anyway,
8:20
Speaker 1: we're not talking about that today. We're talking about Annihilation. Now.
8:23
Speaker 1: I'm also gonna be talking about the movie a little
8:25
Speaker 1: bit because I did happen to watch the movie before
8:29
Speaker 1: the night before recording this as I was listening to
8:34
Speaker 1: the book, and I finished the book today actually, So
8:39
Speaker 1: going into the story now, this is gonna be a
8:41
Speaker 1: brief overview because the honestly this book is good, but
8:46
Speaker 1: there's it's from the perspective of journals of a journal
8:51
Speaker 1: of journal entries to talk about what happened in Area X. Now,
8:56
Speaker 1: if you've seen the movie, take what you know of
8:58
Speaker 1: the movie, take the bear bones of the of the movie,
9:03
Speaker 1: and throw the rest out. Because the book and the
9:05
Speaker 1: movie are fairly different in many ways. Well because they
9:09
Speaker 1: kind of use the book as like a map, kind
9:13
Speaker 1: of here's the story of the book, but let me
9:16
Speaker 1: throw in some extra stuff in there and kind of
9:18
Speaker 1: change some things. So, for example, in the movie, you
9:22
Speaker 1: have you meet the four characters. They're the twelfth, the
9:28
Speaker 1: group twelve that's entering Area X to do survey work
9:32
Speaker 1: and shit, and you get to know their names and
9:34
Speaker 1: the personality stuff. In this one, No, they don't have names.
9:37
Speaker 1: They're known as a biologist, anthropologist, a psychologist at a
9:43
Speaker 1: military train surveyor. They don't have names in this group.
9:48
Speaker 1: I don't think any of the group members know each
9:50
Speaker 1: other's names. And that's on purpose because information like that
9:55
Speaker 1: they want to keep outside of this mission because they
10:00
Speaker 1: don't want to get too personal with each other. It's
10:03
Speaker 1: fucking weird. Like they have to go through vigorous training
10:08
Speaker 1: of before they can go into Area X. Hypnosis, physical training,
10:14
Speaker 1: weapons training, right, and so getting into the story, they
10:21
Speaker 1: cross the border into Area X. A of course, Area
10:25
Speaker 1: X is an unspecified coastal location that has been closed
10:29
Speaker 1: off to the public for the past thirty years. They
10:32
Speaker 1: believe that they they are, So this group that's going
10:36
Speaker 1: in believes that they're the twelfth explanation into Area X,
10:40
Speaker 1: that they're the twelfth group. And the story is narrated
10:44
Speaker 1: through the field journal of the biologist, who gradually reveals
10:48
Speaker 1: that her husband was part of the previous group, which
10:52
Speaker 1: is the same in the movie as well. Now in
10:54
Speaker 1: the book, she kind of it doesn't get explained that
10:57
Speaker 1: it's about fourth away in the movie, while fourth the
10:59
Speaker 1: way into the book. While in the movie you find
11:02
Speaker 1: out right away that this that her husband was in
11:05
Speaker 1: the previous group that went in, and she followed suit.
11:10
Speaker 1: So yeah, the narrator is the biologist, and he talks
11:17
Speaker 1: about how he read how he did return home unexpectedly
11:21
Speaker 1: without the memory or ability to explain his reappearance, and
11:24
Speaker 1: of course the other members of his group showed up
11:28
Speaker 1: separately or simultaneously, and her husband and the others all
11:32
Speaker 1: died of cancer a few months later. Okay, so that
11:35
Speaker 1: was pretty much explained within like the first fourth of
11:38
Speaker 1: the book because they basically talk about how they enter
11:42
Speaker 1: Area X, and then she kind of just drops knowledge
11:48
Speaker 1: on her husband like as the story goes on, so
11:51
Speaker 1: it's not like all at once. So an Area X
11:54
Speaker 1: during the present moment, the four women come upon a
11:58
Speaker 1: unmarked bunker now before they get there, so they get
12:03
Speaker 1: ready to walk in, and then they walk in, and
12:05
Speaker 1: then at some point they lose their memory of them
12:09
Speaker 1: walking in. They don't remember walking into Area X like
12:13
Speaker 1: at all, So they're missing a good twenty thirty minutes
12:18
Speaker 1: of memory because they remember getting ready to go, and
12:20
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden when they come to they're
12:23
Speaker 1: inside Area X already, but they have no memory of
12:26
Speaker 1: walking through it, or walking through what the movie calls
12:30
Speaker 1: the shimmer. Now, they don't necessarily call it the shimmer
12:33
Speaker 1: in the book at all, because you you jump right
12:36
Speaker 1: into the middle of Area X, you don't get the
12:39
Speaker 1: whole necessary build up of what it is or what
12:42
Speaker 1: they're called or whatever. So they enter obviously, they found
12:48
Speaker 1: an unmapped bunker with a staircase curving deep into the ground,
12:53
Speaker 1: which the biologist feels oddly included to think of this
12:58
Speaker 1: thing as a tower quote unquote, well everyone else calls
13:03
Speaker 1: it a tunnel, and she's like, why is everyone else
13:05
Speaker 1: calling this a tunnel. It's obviously more of a tower
13:08
Speaker 1: like structure. So the perception of the characters, you could
13:13
Speaker 1: tell it's different between each person, which could also because
13:18
Speaker 1: of the air area X. So from there, the inter
13:22
Speaker 1: it and they discover a cursive writing that begins with
13:27
Speaker 1: where lies the struggling, struggling fruit that came from the
13:33
Speaker 1: hand of the center, I shall bring forth the seeds
13:36
Speaker 1: of the dead, and expands down the tower stairway, all
13:42
Speaker 1: into a seemingly endless sentence. So those writing that just
13:46
Speaker 1: continuously goes on throughout the whole tower. The biologist is
13:52
Speaker 1: of course amazed to see the words bloom out into
13:57
Speaker 1: a fungal, a fungal material a lot on the wall,
14:01
Speaker 1: and when she examines closely, she inhales the spores from
14:06
Speaker 1: the fungus the mold right, and then she returns to
14:11
Speaker 1: the service. Of course, she tells nobody about what happened
14:14
Speaker 1: with the sports because she's like, well, I'm not gonna
14:16
Speaker 1: tell anybody yet because I don't I want to find
14:18
Speaker 1: out if this is deadly or not before I worry
14:21
Speaker 1: everyone and cause a ruckus, because everyone's like trigger happy
14:25
Speaker 1: on their guns and stuff. So we're like, I'm not
14:27
Speaker 1: going to say anything until I have to, so she doesn't.
14:31
Speaker 1: And when she returns to the service, she notices it's
14:34
Speaker 1: the psychologist, which is the leader of the group, starts
14:37
Speaker 1: using sayings to trigger hypnosis and the other women, but
14:41
Speaker 1: they don't. But it doesn't work on her. For whatever reason,
14:44
Speaker 1: the fun guy is making her immune to these trigger
14:47
Speaker 1: words that the psychologist tells the women to put them
14:51
Speaker 1: in hymnosis. So she, of course now she's immune, probably
14:56
Speaker 1: because the effect of the spores was so she speculates
14:59
Speaker 1: and remains silent for her three remains silent throughout all
15:05
Speaker 1: this because she kind of plays along as she said,
15:07
Speaker 1: note as she's hypnotized. And then they return to their
15:12
Speaker 1: base and they hear an ominous moan come across going
15:17
Speaker 1: across Area X, which repeats nightly, So they constantly hear
15:21
Speaker 1: this moaning noise every night as they're in Area X
15:27
Speaker 1: and there and the biologists is in there over the
15:31
Speaker 1: course of four days in this book, so by the
15:35
Speaker 1: next day, the anthropologist is missing, which Psychologists says that
15:40
Speaker 1: she abandoned her mission. As she pieced out the three
15:45
Speaker 1: others make their way back to the tower, and the
15:48
Speaker 1: psychologist guards the entrance while the surveyor and the biologists
15:52
Speaker 1: descend down the tower, soon finding the multiple mutilated corpses
15:58
Speaker 1: of the apologists. So they find the woman that left.
16:02
Speaker 1: They found her corpse just butchered and whom they deduced
16:09
Speaker 1: was killed by an unknown entity. Also respond she's also
16:17
Speaker 1: responsible for writing on the wall, which Biology privately names
16:22
Speaker 1: the Crawler. So she sees writing on the wall that
16:27
Speaker 1: talks about a certain entity and she, in course, she
16:30
Speaker 1: calls it the crawler. That's where the croller comes from,
16:33
Speaker 1: and this implies that the psychologists lied to them, And
16:37
Speaker 1: returning to the top, they find that she has disappeared.
16:41
Speaker 1: The biologist is uh curious, is conscious have a growing
16:48
Speaker 1: brightness within her which she attunes to the spoors. Of course,
16:55
Speaker 1: she's starting to feel the effects of the sports slowly,
16:57
Speaker 1: She's like, okay, there's something going on here with these
17:00
Speaker 1: little spores inside of me, and she leads to explore
17:03
Speaker 1: a distant lighthouse. Now the lighthouse is in the movie
17:06
Speaker 1: as well. Now what happens in the lighthouse is look different,
17:12
Speaker 1: way different anyway, So the surveyor stays behind to protect
17:17
Speaker 1: their campsite while the biologist goes to the lighthouse. So
17:20
Speaker 1: inside the lighthouse, the biologist discovers a shit ton of
17:28
Speaker 1: bloodstains and large a large hidden pile of past journals
17:34
Speaker 1: of people that went into Area X like they did.
17:40
Speaker 1: So they find so she finds out, oh shit, we're
17:43
Speaker 1: not the twelfth group does come in here. They've been
17:46
Speaker 1: coming in here for decades, for since for thirty years.
17:52
Speaker 1: And that's when it starts kind of clicking, because by
17:55
Speaker 1: this point she also realizes we have outdated technology with us,
18:01
Speaker 1: old technology that we're only allowed to bring into Area X,
18:06
Speaker 1: and she starts questioning why why can't we have like
18:09
Speaker 1: modern day equipment. So questions and red alarms are going off.
18:16
Speaker 1: And another thing I started to that doesn't necessarily make
18:19
Speaker 1: sense is that with them they also have like a
18:21
Speaker 1: black box that's attached to their hip, and if dangers
18:26
Speaker 1: around or they get to like a dangerous area. They
18:28
Speaker 1: don't know what what a box does per se, but
18:31
Speaker 1: if it glows red, that means something's wrong, something something
18:37
Speaker 1: terrible's happening, and they have to evacuate the area that
18:42
Speaker 1: they're in. So she starts questioning the box and then
18:45
Speaker 1: just everything going on when she sees these pile of
18:49
Speaker 1: journals from people who came in here before she did,
18:52
Speaker 1: and then some detail in battles amongst a monstrous presence
18:56
Speaker 1: from the sea. She pockets an old photo of a
18:59
Speaker 1: lighthouse keep and the journal of her late husband. She
19:04
Speaker 1: suddenly finds the psychologist dying next to the lighthouse, having
19:09
Speaker 1: jumped from the top of it. She walks outside and
19:12
Speaker 1: she finds the psychologists like bleeding out because she went
19:17
Speaker 1: to the top of the lighthouse and then jumped off.
19:19
Speaker 1: Because by this point she's been gone the whole time.
19:21
Speaker 1: So it's just been the surveyor and the biologists trying
19:24
Speaker 1: to figure out where the fuck is the uh psychologist
19:29
Speaker 1: and she has to explaining to do because the anthologist
19:32
Speaker 1: is dead. So from there the anthropologist, not the anthropologist, sorry,
19:39
Speaker 1: the psychologists, uh repeats the word. Now I'm trying. I'm
19:53
Speaker 1: trying to find like they have a basically they have
19:56
Speaker 1: a kind of conversation and the way they psychologists, So
20:03
Speaker 1: back out, let me get my thoughts in order here.
20:07
Speaker 1: So in the beginning, before they came into aria X,
20:10
Speaker 1: the psychologists is met up with each and every one
20:12
Speaker 1: of them to do like a analysis on their on them.
20:18
Speaker 1: Being a psychologist, that's her job, as well as plant
20:21
Speaker 1: the hypnosis stuff in there. And throughout the interaction with
20:27
Speaker 1: the psychologists as she's dying, she reveals that the psychologist
20:36
Speaker 1: has implanted words to trigger the group too well commit suicide.
20:47
Speaker 1: So she has like trigger words that are implanted that
20:49
Speaker 1: she's like cool in this case is annihilation. She screams
20:53
Speaker 1: annihilation and hopes to cause the biologists to kill herself,
20:59
Speaker 1: but she does because she's like, no, this isn't work
21:01
Speaker 1: on me an, So apparently they implemented a kill switch
21:07
Speaker 1: for every person in the group that she went in with.
21:10
Speaker 1: And then of course she's you find out later in
21:12
Speaker 1: book two that she's the director of the Southern Reach,
21:17
Speaker 1: but that's in book two, but you can't get that
21:19
Speaker 1: vibe anyway, because she seems very higher up in the
21:24
Speaker 1: group right outside of being the leader of the group
21:27
Speaker 1: going in. So she tries to say annihilation to basically
21:32
Speaker 1: trigger her to kill herself, but she doesn't. And then
21:35
Speaker 1: she travels back to the camp. After she questions the
21:38
Speaker 1: psychologists as she's dying about what's happening here. Of course,
21:42
Speaker 1: psychologists want to tell her nothing. She's like, why are
21:45
Speaker 1: there so many? Where are all these journals coming from?
21:47
Speaker 1: How many people have you all sitt in here? And
21:49
Speaker 1: she's like, you don't want to know, you don't want
21:51
Speaker 1: to know that she's being very vague with her answers,
21:53
Speaker 1: not giving her proper answers, and that's when she tries
21:56
Speaker 1: to say the annihilation. And that's when biologists like, oh,
22:00
Speaker 1: y'all you and plant to kill switches in US. Okay,
22:04
Speaker 1: that that's weird. Why so the biologist has more questions
22:08
Speaker 1: than answers. And then when she's when psychologists dies or
22:14
Speaker 1: as she's dying, yeah, so, before she's dying, the psychologist
22:22
Speaker 1: reveals that aria Ex's border is slowly expanding each year traveling,
22:27
Speaker 1: and then she travels back to the camp. That's like
22:29
Speaker 1: her last words is that, yeah, the area X is expanding.
22:33
Speaker 1: It's creepy ever so closer, which they do indicate that
22:36
Speaker 1: in the movie as well. Continue wing on, she travels
22:41
Speaker 1: back to the base camp and the biologist senses that
22:44
Speaker 1: the nightly moaning of that creature is approaching. It's getting
22:49
Speaker 1: ever so closer, and she narrowly escapes it, but is
22:54
Speaker 1: shot twice by the surveyor, who like the psychologist is
22:58
Speaker 1: terrified of her low. So apparently the woman the biologist
23:04
Speaker 1: is now glowing from the spores as she inhaled. Yeah,
23:09
Speaker 1: so she now she's illuminating, and she realizes that when
23:13
Speaker 1: psychologists calls her a little flame, and then she's like,
23:17
Speaker 1: oh shit, I am glowing. Oh uh oh luminescent what
23:23
Speaker 1: queen icon legend. Yeah, So the surveyor is losing her shit.
23:30
Speaker 1: She's like, you killed you killed everybody. She's losing her mind. Basically,
23:36
Speaker 1: she's unraveling the area acts is obviously messing around with
23:39
Speaker 1: her psyche as well as everyone else is in the
23:41
Speaker 1: perceptions of everything. She starts firing at the biologists a
23:45
Speaker 1: while she's like, hey, I didn't do anything. The psychologist
23:48
Speaker 1: jumped off the top of the lighthouse and she killed herself,
23:52
Speaker 1: and the surveyor does not believe her, and unable to
23:56
Speaker 1: convince the surveyor that she's not a threat, the biologist
23:58
Speaker 1: shoots her dead using newly enhanced instincts that have resulted
24:04
Speaker 1: from her brightening of the from the spores and her
24:10
Speaker 1: own gunshot wounds begin to heal. So she shoots down
24:15
Speaker 1: the course surveyor, and she notices because she did get
24:18
Speaker 1: shot a few times from the surveyor and her wounds
24:21
Speaker 1: starting and he's like, that's suspicious, that's weird. What And
24:28
Speaker 1: then of course biologists continues to analyze plants and animals
24:32
Speaker 1: and gathers samples throughout the area. So she continues her
24:36
Speaker 1: work regardless, and she realizes that some of them have
24:45
Speaker 1: human cells in them, and she of course she also
24:48
Speaker 1: takes DNA from the psychologists some flesh samples as well
24:54
Speaker 1: as then I hair samples. Yeah, but she's analyzing these
24:59
Speaker 1: plants andimals and stuff, and she realizes that they're starting
25:03
Speaker 1: to contain human DNA, which makes sense because she saw
25:05
Speaker 1: a dolphin earlier on the book when they were kind
25:08
Speaker 1: of observing looking around the area. She finds dolphin that
25:12
Speaker 1: has a very human eye, almost two human human eye.
25:18
Speaker 1: She's like, that's suspicious, and yeah, dunimies, that's weird. So
25:28
Speaker 1: she also started reading her husband's journal, which explains that
25:32
Speaker 1: he that him AND's teammate were supposed to were surprised
25:37
Speaker 1: that they could never find the faraway coastal border of
25:42
Speaker 1: Area X. So when they got in, they couldn't find
25:45
Speaker 1: their they couldn't find the exit for whatever reason, and
25:49
Speaker 1: so they returned to the lighthouse to find that the
25:52
Speaker 1: rest of their group were slaughtered. They also witnessed double
25:58
Speaker 1: gangers of the whole group, including themselves, walking to the tower,
26:02
Speaker 1: which caused them to abort the mission. So this so
26:07
Speaker 1: these are like when they you know what? Look continue,
26:12
Speaker 1: I'll get to the double gangers in a minute. The
26:14
Speaker 1: biologist then returns to the tower to confront the Crawler,
26:18
Speaker 1: directly meeting it on the spiral spiral staircase and finding
26:24
Speaker 1: it almost impossible to describe this creature. It is a
26:29
Speaker 1: rapidly shape shifting entity of blinding lights and shattering noises,
26:34
Speaker 1: which paralyzes a biologist in a constant loop of losing
26:40
Speaker 1: consciousness and regaining consciousness. She goes back up to the stairs,
26:45
Speaker 1: where she is amazed that she can now pass by
26:47
Speaker 1: the crawl the crawler unharmed. Looking back at the Crawler
26:52
Speaker 1: one final time, she sees the face of the lighthouse
26:55
Speaker 1: keeper from the photograph trapped inside It's It's globe. She
27:02
Speaker 1: escapes the tower and decides to remain inside Area X
27:06
Speaker 1: and follow the coastline and see where it ends. As
27:10
Speaker 1: her husband once tried to do right and its basically
27:14
Speaker 1: the end of the book, and Layman's terms, that's the
27:16
Speaker 1: end of the book. It's not very long, it's very
27:19
Speaker 1: it's like less about two hundred pages. It's a very
27:22
Speaker 1: quick read. What I find interesting as far as comparison
27:26
Speaker 1: to the movie is the movie ending is completely different.
27:31
Speaker 2: Right.
27:33
Speaker 1: But then again, when it started reading the second book,
27:36
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, maybe that's not her because spoiler alert,
27:41
Speaker 1: the second one, the Biologist, it appears outside of Area X,
27:45
Speaker 1: And now I'm like, thinking back on it now as
27:48
Speaker 1: I'm talking about I'm like, well, that might not be
27:51
Speaker 1: the Biologist. That might be the double Kinger. That the
27:55
Speaker 1: Crawler alien thing, the alien creature that you see in
28:01
Speaker 1: the finale of Annihilation the film, that humanoid creature of
28:09
Speaker 1: light that would mimic now the Aportman's character, I'm a
28:14
Speaker 1: because from halfway through the movie and a half of
28:17
Speaker 1: them to move towards the end of the book, I'm like, Okay,
28:18
Speaker 1: the Crawler is that thing? Got it? Because that's a
28:21
Speaker 1: shape shifter that takes form of whatever it sees. So
28:24
Speaker 1: those things, so the group members are teammates that are
28:27
Speaker 1: coming out of Area X, that are walking around either
28:30
Speaker 1: finding finding loved ones or just wandering about are shape shifters,
28:37
Speaker 1: but they also do have memories of their loved ones,
28:41
Speaker 1: but at least in the movie they did. In the
28:45
Speaker 1: book they don't. Really they keep very vague if the
28:48
Speaker 1: husband really new the biologists or not. And like in
28:56
Speaker 1: the book, the book and the movie have it and
29:00
Speaker 1: have the same idea where the biologists volunteered for wanting
29:04
Speaker 1: to go into Area X, because actually I think they
29:11
Speaker 1: approached her in the book and they asked her say, hey,
29:13
Speaker 1: would you want would you want to go? Because she
29:15
Speaker 1: also wanted to find out what happened to her husband
29:17
Speaker 1: obviously what happened in there, because obviously she's a very
29:24
Speaker 1: she's a biologist, for God's sake, so that's interesting. Curiosity
29:28
Speaker 1: kills a cat. Now. She's also very much a isolated person.
29:32
Speaker 1: She likes being by herself and to herself. She doesn't
29:35
Speaker 1: really like being around people that much. So that's all
29:38
Speaker 1: you know about the biologists on a personal level, So
29:41
Speaker 1: she's very I like being secluded. I like being just alone,
29:46
Speaker 1: be my own thoughts. I don't I don't need anybody.
29:51
Speaker 1: I love my husband, but I don't need him. I
29:53
Speaker 1: can I am perfectly find to being by myself. So
29:56
Speaker 1: by the end of it she gets that waish. I mean,
29:58
Speaker 1: she's by herself, and she says, wearing this whole.
30:00
Speaker 2: New world and I'm sorry, I'm We're gonna pausive pause, pause,
30:06
Speaker 2: real quick. I thought you were talking about yourself For
30:09
Speaker 2: a second there, my husband.
30:11
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm talking about the biologist.
30:14
Speaker 2: Okay, that's okay, all right. For a second there, I
30:19
Speaker 2: was like, when did that happen?
30:22
Speaker 1: Oh you know, okay, not I mean on the right hand,
30:26
Speaker 1: not even on the right finger. Don't get, don't get,
30:30
Speaker 1: don't jump the gun, sir. I didn't say, my husband.
30:33
Speaker 1: I said, theirs hers got all scared the fuck trust me.
30:40
Speaker 1: You didn't tell me. Oh no, ma, if I got engaged,
30:44
Speaker 1: everybody in their goddamn mother's gonna know about it better. Hele, Yeah,
30:49
Speaker 1: the fuck. But yeah. The layout of the book is
30:54
Speaker 1: basically the layout of the movie, except for the bear
30:59
Speaker 1: like creature that you see in the movie, and the
31:02
Speaker 1: whole surveyor snapping and trying to kill the other three
31:06
Speaker 1: by all offering it up to the creature or whatever.
31:08
Speaker 1: None of that happens. The I'm trying to think, was
31:14
Speaker 1: there four or three? There are four or five people
31:17
Speaker 1: that were in the group in the movie, because one
31:21
Speaker 1: died by the bear, one turned into a flout, into
31:24
Speaker 1: a plant it looks like a person, the psychologist. No,
31:30
Speaker 1: there was four, because the psychologist barfed up light and
31:35
Speaker 1: became that the crawler like in the book. Yeah, yeah,
31:42
Speaker 1: there's still four, so you don't really so none of
31:44
Speaker 1: that really happens. Something killed the anthropologist or the anthologists
31:49
Speaker 1: or whatever the heck, and psychologists killed herself basically, and
31:53
Speaker 1: the surveyor got shot in the face because she shot
31:55
Speaker 1: at the biologist. And now she's just wondering the world
31:59
Speaker 1: of Area X on her own as it as it
32:02
Speaker 1: continues to expand. Now in the movie they do she
32:05
Speaker 1: does destroy basically Area X, and it starts receding at
32:09
Speaker 1: the end of the book. And that does not happen
32:10
Speaker 1: at all because the director of the movie did not
32:14
Speaker 1: read the other books. You just read the first one
32:17
Speaker 1: and wanted to make a movie out just the first
32:19
Speaker 1: one and make its own thing while using the name
32:23
Speaker 1: annihilation and the base idea, which I mean, I don't
32:28
Speaker 1: know if I like that or not. I like the movie.
32:32
Speaker 1: The movie was good, but I kind of wish he
32:35
Speaker 1: didn't make it into just one singular film, because there's
32:38
Speaker 1: like now, there's four books and totals, so they could
32:41
Speaker 1: have done more. But I mean for a story contained
32:45
Speaker 1: within itself. I mean, the movie's good, but do you
32:50
Speaker 1: feel you need to what do you feel like you
32:52
Speaker 1: need to read the book before you watch the movie?
32:54
Speaker 2: Now?
32:55
Speaker 1: No, not really because the book is different, is still
32:58
Speaker 1: really different than the book in the movie, because I
33:00
Speaker 1: watched the movie first years ago and then finally got
33:03
Speaker 1: around to read the book. So but yeah, so that
33:07
Speaker 1: is Annihilation, and then next week I'm going to be
33:11
Speaker 1: talking about what's the next one authority Authorities, Book two
33:18
Speaker 1: of the Southern Reach trilogy, and that goes more in
33:21
Speaker 1: detail in the Southern Reach and what that is and
33:23
Speaker 1: who that is and so on and so forth. Thank
33:26
Speaker 1: you all for listening today's episode. Catch us next time
33:29
Speaker 1: as we talk about authority. Until then, b