Today’s episode was filled with classic sci-fi synth and eerie rhythms. An attempt to capture the unsettling, magical escape that the Southern Reach Series embodied for me, and take you on the journey too…
Selections aired on Novel Frequency’s Ep 003 – Area X Marks the Spot, Saturday, 01/18/2024 at 13:00.
Written below are the quotes from each novel within the Southern Reach Trilogy:
- Pg. 113 – Annihilation – “I made some initial rules, as if that would help. I ignored journals that appeared to be written in a shorthand and did not try to decipher those that appeared to be in code. I also started out reading some journals straight through and then decided to force myself to skim. But sampling was sometimes worse. I came across pages that described unspeakable acts that I still cannot bring myself to set down in words. Entries that mentioned periods of “remission” and “cessation” followed by “flare-ups” and “horrible manifestations.” No matter how long Area X had existed, and how many expeditions had come here, I could tell from these accounts that for years before there had ever been a border, strange things had happened along this coast. There had been a proto-Area X.”
- Pg. 97 – Authority – “What had burned brightest within Control as he stared at the wall was not confusion or fear but the irritation he had brought into his session with the biologist. An emotion that manifested as a surprise: cold water dumped into an unsuspecting empty glass. Inconsequential things could lead to failure, one small breach creating another. Then they grew larger, and soon you were in free fall. It could be anything. Forgetting to enter filed notes one afternoon. Getting too close to a surveillance subject. Skimming a file you should have read with your full attention.”
- Pg. 185 – Acceptance – “What kind of life was this, where you could read a letter from you own haunted twin? That you could live within the memories of another and think of them as real, a second skin, and yet so utterly false. This is who she had been. This is what she had thought, and how she had lived. Should that now be Ghost Bird’s life, too, her thoughts? Anger and aw warred within – and no one to push either emotion onto, except herself. She had to let them battle like a second heartbeat and trust that her reaction was not just the mirror reflecting what is saw. That even if she was a mistake, she had become a viable mistake – a mutation, not an anomaly like the moaning creature. Long-moldering bones trapped in the marshes.”
Hope you enjoyed the first iteration of, Read to Filth, where we examine one star reviews to find helpful, and hopefully hilarious criticism. I’m looking forward to further research and certain entertainment for our newest segment!
You’ll be hearing from me next Saturday, January 25th, 2025. For Ep. 004 we will examine the emotional and abiding wisdom of Mimi Zhu’s non-fiction work, Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection. An incredibly spiritual and patient novel, it’s my second book of 2025. I’m so glad I started the year out with these energetically boosting personal essays on surviving, healing, and loving.
Read on,
DJ Page Turner