VanderMeer has been as prolific as ever in recent years, leaning more and more into his unique authorial tendencies, at once naturalistic and anything but. VanderMeer’s debut as a novelist came almost two decades ago, though I first became aware of his writing five years ago, with 2014’s The Southern Reach Trilogy. At its best, Dead Astronauts is an avant-garde and gorgeously textured story that demands to be proselytized. It’s as if the same literary universe, expansive cast of characters and creatures, and unique perspectives have united toward a central aim. VanderMeer is unparalleled in his ability to bring to our ears the songs of such strange worlds, from the animals that inhabit them to the soil itself.Īt times in Dead Astronauts, the book’s sprawling nature seems connected with VanderMeer’s other work. There are giant flying bears, lighthouses that might also be tunnels, and a talking fox that may be the messiah. Jeff VanderMeer, author of the novel Dead Astronauts, seems to have gleefully taken to the nickname “the weird Thoreau.” The moniker was first assigned to him by The New Yorker writer Joshua Rothman, and like Thoreau, VanderMeer tends to center on humankind’s connection to the natural world.
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