Annihilation vs Junkyard Planet: Which Should You Read?

Annihilation Jeff VanderMeer · 2014 ★★★★☆ 3.9 208 pages · ≈ 3 h 51 m · Moderate

“The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats. Beyond the marsh flats and the natural canals lies the ocean and, a little farther down the coast, a derelict lighthouse. All of this part of the country had been abandoned for decades, for reaso”

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The twelfth expedition arrives expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers. They…

Junkyard Planet H. Beam Piper · 1631 ★★★★☆ 3.7 192 pages · ≈ 3 h 33 m · Demanding

This novel had its genesis in a much shorter story called "Graveyard of Dreams" (Galaxy, 1958) Piper expanded it to book length, and it appeared in 1963 as Junkyard Planet. Ace later renamed the book The Cosmic Computer…