Like the rest of the “New Weird” collective of science-fiction writers, Jeff VanderMeer has a knack for turning sci-fi tropes inside out. Best known for his Southern Reach trilogy—the first of which, Annihilation, was loosely adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman—he creates worlds that are all the more terrifying because they don’t make any sense. Annihilation (the book) features a seemingly malevolent alien intelligence that may simply be reclaiming nature from the damage humans have wrought. In Borne, VanderMeer’s latest, humans scavenge in the ruins of a city ruled over by a giant flying bear, created by a corporation that meddles with DNA, that battles a wizard and something much stranger.
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