A Meal of Thorns 32 – AUTHORITY with Zachary Gillan

Picking the second book as an entry point into Area X, weird scholar and normal ARB editor Zachary Gillan is on the pod to talk about Jeff VanderMeer’s work and how the New Weird is more than just ecological anxiety. (Though it might be that, too.)

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• Guest: Zachary Gillan
• Title: Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough
• Transcribers: Kate Dollarhyde and John WM Thompson

References:

• Zach’s Profane Illuminations column at ARB
• Robert Aickman
• Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book-Censor's Library, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman & Sawad Hussain
• Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud A Solitude, translated by Michael Henry Heim
• Annihilation, Acceptance, and Absolution
• VanderMeer’s blog
• VanderMeer’s Ambergris: City of Saints and Madmen; Shriek: An Afterword; Finch
• Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
• MKUltra
• Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox (from Jean-Michel Jasiensko’s French translation) and Bill Johnston (from the Polish)
• Boris & Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, translated by Olena Bormashenko
• Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker
• Alex Garland's Annihilation
• Cormac McCarthy's The Road
• Kay Chronister's Desert Creatures
• Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow
• Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers
• Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski’s Batman: the Animated Series
• Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology and other work
• VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander
• Thomas Ha's Uncertain Sons
• Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain