When you’re contractually obligated to publish three books in a single year, you can’t dilly-dally in dreamland. Unless, of course, your subconscious is as weird and fecund as Jeff VanderMeer’s. From its depths spring images of creaky lighthouses and buried towers, great beasts moaning at dusk, and a brightness that grows inside you—just some of the features that haunt Area X, the mysterious wilderness at the center of his Southern Reach trilogy.