What I\u2019ve Been Reading Lately:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A book that changed the way I think about spy novels. A book that answers the question can you do cosmic horror in government offices?<\/em> Let\u2019s not tease it, here\u2019s part one of this series if you missed it<\/a>, I\u2019m on to book two in the Southern Reach Series<\/em>, Authority<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, I said that Annihilation<\/em> was wildly different from the movie. But let\u2019s say that movie and book end up similar places. Authority<\/em> isn\u2019t about cleaning up the mess of that expedition, exactly, but does focus on the aftermath. The Southern Reach, it turns out, is a division of the CIA. Rather than be a robustly-staffed, best-of-the-best type place, it\u2019s become a backwater agency. Nothing has really changed in the government\u2019s understanding of Area X in the last few decades, and budgets and staff have dried up. The new director, Control (real name: John Rodriguez), is the son of a sculptor father and spy mother, it\u2019s not unfair to call him a CIA nepobaby. Control is here to do the job, though: he seems to actually want to figure out what\u2019s going on with Area X, with the returned-from-Area-X biologist. Still, he\u2019s been run not just by his mother, but by another mysterious CIA overlord named the Voice. The assistant director of the Southern Reach is standoffish. Then, there\u2019s the problem of Area X, which, even if you\u2019ve seen the movie once, you know is not the kind of entity that makes people more sane. Things are, y’know, not easy for our man Control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It feels silly to hash out too much plot, this is the second book of a trilogy. What\u2019s interesting is the overlap between cosmic horror and a spy novel. The CIA wants to understand Area X\u2014okay, maybe that\u2019s a possible goal. The CIA wants to contain Area X\u2014let\u2019s just say that by Act III or so, it begins to feel silly that the CIA was even near Area X at all. Whatever this entity is, wherever it came from, it is not a controllable thing. And it might not want anything from us, it might not even care that we exist, but the logical endpoint is the world as we know it forever changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a type of horror that really gets me quaking in my Chuck Taylors. I had to put down Dawn<\/em> by Octavia Butler. With the might of Silicon Valley trained on LLMs, I think about the world fundamentally altering beneath my feet a lot. Literally, with all the data centers destroying the environment, for one. On a more societal level, which people\u2019s brains atrophying and AI psychosis becoming more common. How did people handle the building of the highway system? The knowledge that nuclear weapons had come into the world<\/a>? The continent-altering carnage of World War I? What did Indigenous Americans during the first few years of first contact really think about? How do you deal with this scale of change, especially when you had no say in it? When the forces behind the change are completely indifferent to you? It\u2019s terrifying to contemplate. I won\u2019t say this book is as scary as the first one\u2014it seems to be creeping towards even greater terror (and terroir, IYKYK) in Acceptance<\/em>. But it\u2019s pretty damn unsettling. Definitely changed the way I think of spy novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Listen, it\u2019s bad out here, with the federal government declaring war on Chicago and launching an invasion. The violent, unfeeling demons of ICE are out here shooting people and pepper-spraying peaceful protesters and detaining journalists and killing single fathers. There is absolutely no forgiveness for what is happening. I believe this country is already in civil war, and maybe has been since the mass shooting boom of the 2010s, although the homie LJ Pemberton said maybe a better start date is the Oklahoma City Bombing. The freaks who cheered that on, or would have if they were alive then? They are now invading Chicago. So let\u2019s listen to, I don\u2019t know, a good fucking song, at least. Here\u2019s “Against The Fall Of Night” by Sungazer, a song that always puts me in a good mood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_6545-768x1024.jpg\")