Part of being married is experiencing new things that you would otherwise have not because of your partner. I can't say that I always skipped the previews at the theater when I would go to see movies, but my wife makes seeing the previews part of her theater going experience. During the previews recently, I saw one for a movie called Annihilation which looked pretty interesting. Digging into it a bit, it turns out it is a book and part of a trilogy. So I added Annihilation to my reading list and I'm really happy that I did. It is a short and quite good read.

Science fiction is a genre that is bimodal for me. Most science fiction I enjoy, from Dune to Ready Player One, but there are a lot that I hate. I hate the stuff that makes the technology or the future or the whatever classifies it as science fiction the main point. I enjoy the books that are telling a story that happen to be set in a world with different rules. Now if the different world had no effect on the story then it would not really be science fiction, but the main point has to be the story. Some things, like Harry Potter, explain away parts of the story by appealing to their particular universe's quirks for a type of deus ex machina. Others just focus on the oddity of the world with a less than interesting story that goes along with it. Annihilation is almost exclusive focused on this fictional world and how it differs from our own, and yet that is what makes it good. There is a compelling human story, but because of the plot, the interplay between the oddity of this place and the human elements are what make the book good.

I highly recommend this book, I am holding off on my great rating only because it left me hanging too much. I imagine this is because I just need to read all three books, but I still felt like it was over too soon with too much left unanswered. I am happy to have read it before seeing the movie, but I am definitely going to go out and see the movie as the book reads like it will have a cool visual representation.