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healthcare bureaucrat in philly, v adhd, orthodox jew, ect ect, im love my wife



Rhiannon
@Rhiannon

Authority (2014 (the sequel to Annihilation (the book))) is like what if instead of Aliens, we got a sequel to Alien that was basically Michael Clayton but set at whatever vestigial government office is nominally in charge of dealing with the bullshit scifi industrial disasters Weyland-Yutani is constantly causing. Ripley is technically present, but doesn't want to talk to any of the other principal characters, and has fairly little screen time until the final 20 minutes of the movie, when things start getting weirder fast.

Does it work as a novel? Kind of. Does it work as a sequel to Annihilation? Absolutely not. But i do kind of have to respect the wild audacity of that kind of genre swing. And despite mostly not working it has some of my absolute favorite scenes in that series, none of which feel like they belong to the book at all.


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in reply to @Rhiannon's post:

I keep saying that the reason Authority doesn't work as well as the others is because Control's motivation is all wrong

Like, up the neuroticism and make him even more of a control freak that sees Area X as the embodiment of chaos and therefore, his mortal enemy.

Make his obsession with the biologist less vague and less personal. Make him obsessively convinced that she has the exact information he needs to completely understand Area X and therefore control it. Make him see her as an agent of Area X, even if he understands that's an unfair, irrational thought.

The book wouldn't even have to change that much, a tweak to Control's inner monologue would have made this book work better, imo

I still liked it but... What a "middle book"

Yeah. And as a bonus fixing his motivation there would also fix him in Acceptance. Make him less of a weird hanger-on to Ghost Bird. He spent so much effort trying to avoid ending up in Area X only to willingly jump into it for no discernable reason, and he has no feelings about that, no goals no anything. But if he's still convinced that with the right intel, he can control Area X, then the whole experience is reframed to him realizing there is no controlling it. Then him jumping into the brightness at the very end would be much more tightly in line with the whole "surrendering" of control and acceptance themes that underline the series

I still liked it but... What a "middle book"

yeah, it really spends its full length teeing up Acceptance (which is great!). i also quite enjoyed Authority but agree it could’ve done more

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