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Week 4: Annihilation (#6 points)


    On March 14, physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, who died on March 14, warned of sudden alien changes such as a comet collision and the possibility of alien life invading Earth. The point of the argument was that in the worst case, humanity could be extinct under such circumstances, and before that, new settlements other than Earth should be pioneered. Annihilation made me look back on Dr. Hawking's argument. 


    The novel can be summarized as a story about human’s responses to the threat of survival due to the spread of unusual phenomena originating from outer space. Five female expeditions consisting of a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist enter an ‘Area X’ dominated by a peculiar phenomenon. After entering Area X, they set up a base camp in the area, and while exploring the surroundings, they discovered a tower that leads to the basement. 


    Biologists call the space she and the expedition discovered as a tower, but the rest of her colleagues think of it as a kind of cave-like tunnel. They stepped into a tower and found some sentences made of small living creatures that were written on the wall. Biologist tried to translate the meaning of those sentences, and she accidentally inhaled some spores. These spores caused the unknown change in her body, and it made biologists doubt the purpose of the exploration. After her body was infected with the spores, she noticed the psychologist hypnotizes and controls everyone in the expeditions, because the infection helped her not to be hypnotized by the psychologist. 


    The set-ups like the unknown mysterious place ‘Area X’, the situation that no one was allowed to bring high-tech devices being entirely excluded from the reality, and the expedition who distrust each other cause insecurity throughout the story, and they made me immerse myself into the story. 


    I feel like every bizarre phenomenon such as an alive tower, breathing letters on the wall, and the mysterious creature threatening the characters can be seen as a satirical story of the current situation of mankind. These phenomenons are ongoing work that mankind has already experienced and is experiencing countless times, an extreme environmental change like global warming, natural disasters, the outbreak of various viruses, and the appearance of super bacteria. A technology like genetic manipulation disturbs the order of nature, indiscriminate development is destroying the habitats of other creatures, and mankind leads these reckless actions. Now, mankind is the subject who interrupts the entire ecosystem and leads other organisms to extinction, however, this story indirectly warns that we can be put in the place of them at any time.

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