Live to fight again

Just keep going.

Not at all Oldboy

Grin, and the world grins with you.

Swords Against Death, Fritz Leiber (Centipede Press Edition)

Here's book 2 of what Centipede Press labels the definitive 8-volume series that'll collect all of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories written by Fritz Leiber, but also those by his friend Harry Fischer, who naturally also gets credit for the creation of the iconic sword and sorcery duo.

Also included in the series, and as this is new information to me, which is why I've written down more than it actually warrants at this time here, will be an authorized Lankhmar novel, and thus canonical as shit, jow; Swords against the Shadowland, written by Robin Wayne Bailey, which (I'm making a highly educated guess here) will be included, or rather more likely, make up the 8th volume of this series given that it is actually novel length.

Swords against the Shadowland was supposed to be the first of the novels to continue the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but as of yet it is the only novel to have come out.

The story itself is apparently a direct sequel to Ill-Met in Lankhmar meaning it would slot rather neatly between the first and second novel, though there's apparently some overlap with The Circle Curse short story, the first story in Swords Against Death.

Here are the two available volumes together.

Yes, I've taken enough pictures again.

The artwork this time around, is from the hand of Dominick Saponaro, and it's pretty good,

though for some reason Fafhrd comes without his ever-present beard (though I do seem to remember him losing it at one point. Shaving it off for one girl or another, the faithless bastard.) and the Mouser ends up being rather a lot prettier than I ever envisioned him.

What? A man can call another man pretty without making it weird, can't he?

No, I'm not making it weird. You are the one making it weird.

The embossing is wonderful again.

More minimalistic, and in my opinion slightly better than that of the first volume.

I noticed the embossing doesn't match the cover art, which is fine.

Blue reading ribbon. Which is slightly odd as volume 1 had a purple ribbon and blue-ish cover art, and this volume has a blue ribbon and purple cover art.

Again, odd, though it would be a neat trick if we could keep jumping between the two colours for the rest of the series. But then again, that'd be boring maybe?

If that sight doesn't give you tingles, you don't give a damn about books.

Centipede Press delivers yet again.

Swaying wheat; I'd say from Sheelba of the Eyeless Face's swamp?

And the crystal skull glass returns, 

this time doing its best to hide the fact that the book comes with an introduction that foolishly tries to compare Leiber's heroes to Tolkien's work.

I say foolish, because... really, why bother? Comparisons to Tolkien have become trite at this point. We can enjoy one without comparing to the other, no?

Lankhmar might not be as widely known as Middle-Earth, but once visited you'll likely not run the risk of confusing them. I don't know. Maybe it does the trick for new readers, but are new readers likely to pick up collector's editions like these? Leave it out is what I'm saying.

It rankles far out of proportion to how much it even mentions, and I should stop talking about it now.

That is fucking gorgeous.

Dominick Saponaro once again.

Detailed table of contents:

All of the stories of Swords against Death + An introduction Steve Rasnic Trem (Ubo) + and a foreword and introduction by Leiber himself.

Also included are 3 short commentary pieces by Leiber, as himself again.

For the rest we have some more lovely art pieces.

Sheelba, in the house in the swamps, being as usual a conniving bitch, or; a conniving dick, depending on if you'd have asked Harry Fischer or Leiber, respectively.

No idea who these guys are.

A re-read is in order at some point.

Again, a very moody piece of artwork.

Alas, beardless.

Stubble is a beard of sorts, no?

And that concludes it for this volume.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

Somewhere during the dark times I've somehow had the time to finish a novel I've been meaning to read. Probably because it wasn't too long, at only a little over a 100 pages. I stopped wondering which edition to buy, and just made the plunge and ended up ordering the edition I had been thinking about most: the 2005 Orion paperback edition of the Read a Good Movie series (or something, I still have no idea on how to call this one.)

The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of those crime novels whose fame and notoriety precedes it by a good length: Banned on publication in Boston, for both its violence and sexual content, adapted a bunch of times, including one adaptation with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson, and then of course; this little snippet from Frances McDormand:

So yeah I'll be honest, mostly because of McDormand, I was really curious to see how this one would play out.

It was also going to be my first brush with crime fiction, if one doesn't count Sherlock Holmes or Poe, of course.

And it turned out to be a good and pretty compulsive read, although at the start I confess I got a little annoyed by its dialogue.
It's also hardly as erotic or sensational in this day and age. Open up any contemporary grim-dark novel and you're likely to find more graphic depictions of both sex and violence on any given page than you'll find here in the entire novel. That's not to say there's nothing here, just maybe that if you've come looking for it, if you've seen a recommendation somewhere attesting to a state of heightened sensuality, then you're gonna end up disappointed.

As for pluses: One of the best things about the novel is the romance at the heart of it; the relationship between Frank and Cora, and I was taken aback by how much I actually liked it. Not knowing anything about its end I found I was actually rooting for them: Regular flawed people, thrown into passion and crime, inevitably headed toward tragedy. Although not that inevitably.
Added to that, a good plot, with a surprisingly heartfelt resolution.

And keep in mind; heartfelt can go with many a feeling.

Gotta tell you, though, I got a little lost about three quarters in where there's a courtroom trial; with all the explanations that followed, them being all so technical and all, but by the end of the chapter I had caught on and I confess that I was quite amused by the legal wrangling. It's that old saying; only two things are certain in life; death and taxes, or in this case, death and insurance companies investigating their claims.

Miscellaneous Book Haul

Had some books arrive recently, and quite an eclectic selection it is too.

First up are the re-prints of the Malus Darkblade saga, because of course I was going to buy those, and all of which I've read and enjoyed in the past, barring the last one, which concludes that saga... by setting it in the Warhammer End Times.

Needless to say I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to find out exactly how this saga comes to a close.

These are also, I sigh in resignation, mass market paperbacks, rather than the sexy trade paperbacks I was so hoping for. To be fair, on the Black Library site they didn't not say that these were going to be mass markets, but still: at 11 euros a book I do feel I've been led on a bit.

Same for Drachenfels, which actually still looks as delectable as ever, and I'm very pleased to finally have this particular edition of a book I loved so much.

I'll do a re-read and review, as I promised a while back, just to see how well it still holds up.

Not sure when, but the idea's stuck in my head at least, so It's gonna get done.

My order also came with the free Black Library Celebration 2018 booklet, collecting 6 short stories for readers to become acquainted with Games Workshop's three stable universes.

The most interesting of these is undoubtably, for me, Into Exile, a short tale of the Horus Heresy, by the esteemed Aaron Dembski-Bowden, who always seems to be able to provide the darkest shades of melancholy gold.

Not sure when or if I'll even read the Age of Sigmar tales though.

I'm sure they're good, but, well... you know my policy there.

And another re-print of the Warhammer variety:

Darkblade: Reign of Blood is actually the comic that inspired the books.

Black and white artwork that's easy to look at and to follow along.

Here the book's alongside my Hellbrandt Grimm copy, which is actually the same size though it doesn't quite look like it here, and which's artwork is not as easy to look at, or even to follow along with. 

Though Grimm's tales are fun, they do need to be in a larger format to be appreciated,

as the small lettering gave me eyestrain even when I had my good glasses on me.

I was worried that this would be the same case with Reign of Blood, but fortunately that has less dense panelling and a more acceptable equilibrium between art and dialogue.

Now, onto less Warhammer-centric stuff:

Here's Brian Keene' and Steven Shrewbury's Throne of the Bastards, follow-up to the pretty good King of the Bastards.

I enjoyed King quite a bit, for its violence and its bad-ass protagonist but especially for all the bits that hinted at almost Biblical roots.

Which is why when I found out there was a sequel, I didn't wait too long to snap it up.

For those of you worried about cover and size continuity: Here's the two books side by side.

page count 176 to King's 163. Still very short but I'm sure this one'll be just as fun as the first one was.

Artwork by Daniel Kamarudin.

King of the Bastards' artwork was the reason why I picked it up actually.

I'm a sucker for covers like this. I picked up the entirety of Glen Cook's stuff because it had Raymond Swanland art, and that turned out to be some of the best fantasy fiction I've read.

So, no need to change the art policy at this stage yet.

Next one up is The Postman Always Rings Twice.

No idea really what edition this actually is, still.

I'll keep my comments for the next post as I actually already read this one pretty soon after it arrived and I have most of my thoughts written down as well.

Up next is John M. Ford's the Last Hot Time, which is here by dint of it being the only title of this author that I could easily get, and which was not related to tie-in fiction.

At a guess, this one is about fantastical races in a gangster-Chicago?

The late John M. Ford's literary work is largely out of print these days, because of personal animosity between him and his family in the last years of his life. Not having taken care enough to provide for a will that would help keep his work in the hands of those who would care for it, upon his death it ended up in the hands of those ill disposed towards it, which answers for the scarcity and obscurity of Ford's literary work that by all accounts I've read is both complex and rewarding.

I stumbled on this information while I was wondering which Fantasy Masterwork I should be reading next, and as my eye fell on the Dragon Waiting I wanted to dig up some information on this author that I knew absolutely nothing of.

What can one say, really? The world is a sad and petty place and stuff like this happens.

Everyone has their reasons and everyone has their private hurt.

Sometimes this boils over into the public eye.

Sometimes the consequences far outstrip the level of hurt.

Whatever the reasons, the censoring and suppression of quality and dedication is always the wrong answer to pain.

Thomas Ligotti is an interesting writer.

 I've only read his Teatro Grottesco and the first 50 pages or so of his non-fiction; the Conspiracy Against the Human race, and as I've read a few pages from this one already, I can say it matches the ideas and intent of that work closer than it does to Teatro's.

It's not a good book to read during this time though as I'm  trying to stay away from the crippling nihilism for a bit.

I'll keep it for a rainy day, when my pursuits have become less tinted by emotional hang-ups and are more touched by the scholar in me.

And lastly, the three final books I needed to complete my Michael Moorcock collection.

The Collection is now complete and I can finally sho-... Wait... What, there's another one?

Mother London you say?

 Well shit.

Guess I'll have to collect that one before I share any more then.

Don't worry though, I've had something coming in the pipeline for a long time now and when I get that final book too I'll start diving into that. Until then, we'll see how we fill the time.

Annihilation: The Alien

As this is all conjecture, and doesn't really add a coherent frame for the whole, and is filled with dead ends I should've maybe deleted it, but it seemed a shame to do so.
There's some interesting ideas here, even if I say so myself.

The Alien

The first thing to understand is that the alien entity, if it even is an entity, is entirely unknowable. It's wrong to assume it has any kind of agenda or goal. This is what the lengthy interrogation scene frequently visited throughout the movie, and specifically the part at the end of the movie, which btw was already present in the trailers, is meant to convey: "I don't know." and can not know.

And remember the recent trend of how studios decide to put too much revealing information in a movie's trailer to further entice the audience that just wants to leave the theater with their movie already comfortably digested.

 Annihilation's trailer is definitely one of those. All the information about the alien is already in there: a spoken statement delivered at the movie's end already revealed in the trailers: there is no information about what the audience will be most lost and confused about.

There is no answer for why it does what it does. Simply take it that it exists, and that it mutates everything around it. There's a reason why the first time we see Portman she is talking about a cell. Because the alien intrusion acts like a cell, and its programming is to self-replicate, but as it is delivered into this completely new environment, it subsumes and then multiplies. With the way that the dialogue works in this movie: Lena states that it exists, so it exists like it is: 'I don't think it wanted anything'. It just happens to superimpose itself on anything around it, alteration without design. Conflict that isn't conflict, but one-sided inclusion that is inimical to the consciousness of the other side, thus taken as agression.

In other words take it as a given that mankind is still unique in its awareness of itself, and that it takes any outside intrusion as an act of aggression, even when what is happening is without intention.

-----

Ventress elaboration, or; a classic case of overthinking things:

However, initially I tried a more straightforward approach where I just focused on the Forge-construct; that's what I call the floating, ceaselessly mutating object in the heart of the chamber beneath the lighthouse.
The chamber I've heard referred to as a spaceship in other explanations, but I genuinely don't have my own interpretation here. It is relevant that the final act of self-destruction happens in the heart of that room, as if it is the static center at the heart of all the mutations; when the Lena-replicant collapses on the raised dais at the heart of the chamber.
But the hole through which the object crashed through the lighthouse into the bedrock beneath is significantly smaller than the room with the moving walls. This alone flat-out contradicts any and all theories that suppose it is a spaceship or anything of the kind.

Any explanation stalled from the moment I realized that when Ventress dissolves into a spectacular light show, and which then reforms into the Forge-construct, all of Ventress has been used to make it.
What I'm getting at is that there's no excess matter... which in my book means that there's something wrong.
And the same thing happens with the duplicate created from the blood drop of Lena: The second the drop, with all the DNA present required to re-create Lena, hits the heart of the Forge it replicates itself until it can form the frame that would mutate into the perfect copy of Lena.

I'm wrong but more on that below.

There's no real reason for the delay in perfect re-creation other than that Garland wanted to include that 'Dance' scene, but let us assume: within the confines of the plausibility, that the copying halts because the creation needs to be an exact replication of the Lena as she is at that moment; Ie a Lena with a tattoo on her arm and gash on her head. Likely also a different Lena than how she had been born: genetics doesn't mean one's body isn't altered by accidents, surgery, body modification or whatever: beauty mods, progressive surgery...

When the shimmering rduplicate of Lena stands at the center of the room beneath the lighthouse, there's no sign of the Forge-construct.

Presumably, the opposite of Ventress' dissolution has happened here: Complete incorporation of the Forge-construct) to create an initial copy of Lena that'll still adapt itself via imprint and proximity to the original Lena, into a perfect copy of that Lena as she is at that moment.

The problem here is that if one indeed assumes that the copy is an alien life form, then these aren't perfect copies, and they are just forgeries running around, puppets controlled by an alien purpose. But we know, because the movie's dialogue directly contradicts this,

 and the hackneyed dialogue here is law, 

that this isn't the case: that these are in fact duplicates: perfect duplicates.
There is no room for an alien entity, or consciousness inside of that human shell.

But where does the Forge-construct come from?

Ventress says, without much elaboration "It's inside me now, It's unlike us...".

So, before Ventress entered that room, was there something else there, waiting? Something that then went inside Ventress and started to rewrite her completely? But then... assuming the alien entity is inside here at the moment of dissolution, and then when the Forge-construct is created... why does it use all of Ventress? There doesn't seem to be any waste at all, same for the bullets shot into the Lena-duplicate  by Lena: also incorporated into the yet being-created-duplicate-Lena.

Matter to create matter, sure. But, where was the matter that was there before?
And I'm assuming duplicate-Lena doesn't have bones made of metal;

Although she does traipse through the lighthouse on fire long enough to suggest that there's something very much different from the human form in its physical make-up.

I'm saying stuff logically doesn't add up. Where did that metal go?
Where's the matter that wasn't the matter that originated of Lena and should have been expelled? Is there an expelling process, why do we not see it?

Actually, maybe the bullets were used to strengthen certain parts of the duplicate-lena's body; it would allow her to stay alive longer while on fire, maybe?

Even if the alien entity does not operate on the template of carbon-based lifeforms, humans do. There is a limit to how much it can achieve with the clay it's working with. This is not magic.

It's something that I got stuck on, but ultimately just discarded because, even if I can find the answer, it doesn't really matter anyway. There's no point on dwelling on the Alien, because it is just the point of origin, it is the catalyst for change and drama, and the movie does not provide an answer.

Can not know, will not know: dismiss if you ever want to accept the movie. Enjoy the lightshow, enjoy the sound, but don't look too close.

Replicant-Kane Mysteries

There's also the mystery of how duplicate-Kane arrived at Lena and Kane's home, but as we don't know how far away their domicile actually is from the Shimmer, all one can submit here is guesswork.
Duplicate-Kane just seems to appear inside of the home and when he is asked how he got there he only responds in vague generalities. Dismiss.

More pertinent and just as uncertain is the reason why duplicate-Kane shortly after his arrival at the Lena-domicile starts to show signs of catastrophic organ failure. Easy conclusions to draw are that he needs to be in the Shimmer's vicinity in order to function.

But, oddly, It isn't until the Shimmer's collapse that he shows any signs of improvement. Within 2 hours of the final collapse of the Crystal Trees on the beach, his recovery is complete.

Dismiss also that Lena had been inside of the Shimmer for ten months at this point, which is a long time for duplicate-Kane to cling on to life with a whole host of failing organs.

Worryingly, for everything I've written down, it contradicts my alien-lifeform-has-no-intentions idea as it points to a continuous link between a replica outside of the Shimmer and either the Shimmer itself or something inside of the Shimmer. A link that actively seems to deteriorate any organism that travels from inside the Shimmer to outside of it.
A link that, when it falls away, only seems to improve the rogue organism's faculties.
If I had to make a guess, Id say that this part is here as plot contrivance. But I might be wrong, I don't really want to look at it too closely. But feel free to make suggestions.

Bottomline, again, in my opinion, Can not know, because looking too closely will show glaring contradictions.

-----

Funnily, or not so, enough. This is pretty much the same problem I had with American Gods: The movie's failure to give enough rules, is the only thing that'll allow its mythology to work.

Only by leaving the Alien a complete mystery lets its capabilities remain within the confines of enough possibilities that will allow for the movie's scenario.

Except I have the sneaking suspicion that it really doesn't.

Yet another Revisitation: collating of evidence

I said previously that whatever happens to the forge construct, all of it is used to make Lena. Except, that isn't true, is it?

Looking closely, you can see the air directly around the first stage of the Lena-duplicate shimmer and pulse, as if excess matter is dissipating.

But the only thing you could possibly deduce from this is that the chamber, or something inside of the chamber, houses the primary means of 'steering' the working of the Shimmer and the process of human replication.

Similarly, when the chamber's air finally immolates entirely when the Lena-duplicate collapses on the dais at the heart of the chamber, some sort of chain reaction sets the crystal trees on the beach on fire and causes them to collapse, and soon after, the Shimmer dissipates entirely.

With the disappearance of the Shimmer, the Kane-duplicate for some reason or other, starts to heal himself. Implying that there was some link present when the chamber was still safe. But that it was a link that actively harmed him when the Kane-duplicate was outside of the Shimmer, but that withdrew its influence when the Shimmer dissipated.

Implying intent.

-----

Look, you want me to say it again?

It is a plot contrivance. We all know it. It doesn't have to make a damn lick of sense.

It's just that there might also be a way that this all adds up to one perfect explanation.

But I'm just not seeing it.

Final

Okay okay, The Alien is unknowable.

But we could feasibly pin-point its working parameters.

It is present in the chamber beneath the lighthouse. It can either make itself manifest as the forge-construct, or make the forge-construct manifest to duplicate complex organisms at an elevated rate.

Its influence is present outside of this room, likely everywhere in the shimmer.

However. the Kane-duplicate begins to crash as he has left the shimmer; and though we can argue that this an after-effect from the forging process and that the Shimmer itself kept him healthy so far, this does not explain why he then heals the second the Shimmer goes down.

It's even seems completely contrarily impossible.

Unless. The Shimmer, the bubble, existed to contain the mutating field, and that when it dissipates, these mutating agents are released into the direct surroundings, where Duplicate-Kane is, and that with that contact he is healed, temporarily or not.

In that case there are two scenarios post movie-ending:

One is where duplicate-Kane's healing process is temporary and begins to fail as the mutating agent dissipates into the environment enough, having no alien origin source to sustain it, which would lead to his death. This would likely also kill Lena.

The other is that the mutating was not wholly dependent on the alien and that once introduced to the environment it would self-replicate ad infinitum, meaning that when the bubble has dissipated, the mutating process would become uncontrolled and uncontrollable, leading eventually to a completely mutated earth. Or something.

...

Ah fuck: It could also just be that there is actually a link to the alien (consciousness then?) present in the duplicates. Which would explain why duplicate Kane falls ill (by intent then) outside of the shimmer, but heals as the alien dies, as he then becomes an autonomous organism.

God damnit...
Did I just shoot the legs out from under everything I wrote previously?

No wait, because this then contradicts the possibility of duplicate-Lena killing herself as she does, because a link to an alien consciousness would have necessitated a certain level of self-preservation.
It denies the theme of self-destruction and  as this is the movie's most important element that would be unlikely as all hell.

Fuck it. I've stumbled on a few good ideas here at least.
I'm just going to go and read a book.

The Annihilation Interpretation

I was gonna let this one slide, mainly because at a certain point I just became plain disinterested, but as one of its main themes has some definite continued relevance to me and the blog, and as it offers me a way back into some sort of respectability, I guess I'll make some effort and give my interpretation of Annihilation.

I've seen everybody give explanations and opinions on this movie and I find that pretty much all of what I've encountered has contradicted what I thought the movie was, either in details or in all of it.
So here's where I'll give you my take, and as usual with these long-gestating posts, it tends to ramble while it tries to encompass every aspect of the thing itself.

Annihilation is a movie about an object from space that crashed into a remote shoreline of America. Quite soon after, a bubble, labeled 'The Shimmer', formed around this site, expanding outwards rapidly, while mutating everything within its confines.

Now, we follow a team of 5 women as they travel into the bubble, to explore its wonders and face its dangers, while they try to reach the site of the crash to determine the mystery at its heart.

It's at the very least an interesting movie and if you haven't seen it by now, you probably should. Be warned there's some body- and existential horror elements coupled with some truly bizarre and beautifully trippy visuals. The plot is undeniably confusing, and the movie's music is odd; very unconventional, though in my opinion wonderfully suited for where it is used.

The movie's themes are also unconventional, very un-mainstream. The central one is in the title: Annihilation. But not just annihilation of the other (, as in the movie's name-dropping scene, spoken by psychologist Ventress), but also of the self: self-annihilation; self-destruction.

Spoilers from hereon out.

Self-Destruction

In the first, for artistic license and to strengthen the movie's theme, one scene points to how aging is a flaw encoded into our genes, and that if one were to circumvent a cell's Hayflick limit, one could negate that cell's tendency to grow old, thereby eliminating the cellular encoding to self-destruct, leading one to be able to achieve that cell's, theoretical, immortality.

Second, in Lena's conversation with Cassie early in the movie we get insights into the nature and tendencies of the women in the expedition.

Which establishes that every single one of these women has a prediliction for, or is giving in to self-destructive urges.

Either through drink, active self-harm, or by volunteering themselves for the journey into the Shimmer out of a disregard for continuation through recognition of immanent death, or because of a disinterest for continuation in light of the loss of loved ones.

There's however a significant difference as to how Lena's character fits in here but I'll talk about that later.

Thirdly, in a scene halfway through the movie, where Psychologist Ventress has a conversation with Lena on the difference between Suicide and Self-destruction.

"Is that what you think we are doing? Comitting Suicide?... 

... You are confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct, in some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke. We destabilize the good job. Or the happy marriage. These aren't decisions, they are impulses...."

The movie is at this point making a hare-brained leap in that conversation, building on semantics rather than on what is intended, selectively taking a jumping off point to dive into a theme already heavily present.
We and Lena roll along with the conversation while it's clear that she did not intend her wording to be taken so literal. But Ventress does, and she builds on it and so the movie expects us to go along with this as well.
Time is taken out to define self-destruction, whereas suicide is left a little on the side. Despite it being crucial to the film as well.

In my opinion; while suicide is the word we use to define that individual act of ending, self destruction is a bubble term: All suicide is self-destruction, but not all self-destruction is suicide.

The movie does this, makes this ungainly leap, so it can add another piece of the puzzle that will inform the audience on how to interpret the ending. It also conveniently forgets to address the fact that Lena's husband did go on a mission that he didn't not expect to come back from, and that he indeed set out to commit suicide, albeit by delay.

Inept Crafting

Ventress in this moment leads the conversation in a direction to suit her own dialogue, inner psychology and ideas. Suicide is on her mind most because out of all these characters, she is the only one who knows that her time is running out. Therefore, when Lena gives an opening to touch on what she is obsessed by, she jumps on it and leads the conversation away from what is actually being asked.

This conversation and in fact, pretty much all of the dialogue in the movie, is directly contrived after the fact: Alex Garland constructed the beginning and middle of his loose movie adaptation, based on how he wanted to end it.

This is a different vision, a different take on Vandermeer's book. I haven't read it and won't, simply because even though he harps on about consciousness and nature, he's one of those that likes to demonize real people rather than actually taking the effort to self-identify.
Judgment without leniency.

This is why whenever it sounds in the movie like this isn't really how people talk, it really isn't how they talk. The movie's ideas are bigger than its language. There's no way to introduce the concepts and ideas that build up the movie's ending that wouldn't bore the crap out of a regular viewer.
It is the movie's weakest aspect. The dialogue is almost exclusively expository. And specifically, the most-revealing answers, those meant to give the clues integral to our final understanding, are spoken by the ubiquitous 'very tortured clever person'; the thin-skinned, big-hearted, intense intellect type of character, the one supposed to be immediately likable, because of sympathy reasons; disease or mental illness as a superpower, a trope you've undoubtedly encountered already.
We're supposed to take the almost nonsensical diatribes at face value and as rule because she operates at a higher level than us, hard-won by the personal torment of the 'other', of the one apart.

This doesn't invalidate anything, it just makes it so that the dialogue is occasionally very ham-fisted and flat-out disconnected from the normality around it. Characters make leaps in intuition and logic only because they're written that way, to give arguments and clues as to how to interpret certain of the movie's parts.
This is not exclusive to Josie, but also very present in leading lady Natalie Portman, who can't seem to always hit the mark with the odd dialogue she's been given.

So then, with that out of the way; Explanations.

The Alien

The first thing to understand is that the alien entity, if it even is an entity, is entirely unknowable. It's wrong to assume it has any kind of agenda or goal. This is what the lengthy interrogation scene frequently visited throughout the movie, and specifically the part at the end of the movie, which was already noticably present in the trailers, is meant to convey: "I don't know." And can not know.

And remember the recent trend of how studios decide to put too much revealing information in a movie's trailer to further entice the audience that just wants to leave the theater with their movie already comfortably digested?
 Annihilation's trailer is definitely one of those. All the information about the alien is already in there: a spoken statement delivered at the movie's end already revealed in its entirety in the trailers: there is no information about what the audience will be most lost and confused about, and it is signposted before you even see the movie.

There is no answer for why it does what it does. Simply take it that it exists, and that it mutates everything around it. There's a reason why the first time we see Portman she is talking about a cell. Because the alien intrusion acts like a cell, and its programming is to cellf-replicate (AHAHAHAHAHAHAA,.. sorry.), but as it is delivered into this completely new environment, it subsumes and then multiplies.
With the way that the dialogue works in this movie: Lena states that it exists, so it exists like it is.
'I don't think it wanted anything'; so it does not want anything, and it just happens to superimpose itself on anything around it: Alteration without design, conflict that isn't conflict, but one-sided inclusion that is inimical to the very being of the other side, thus taken as aggression.

In other words take it as a given that mankind is still unique in its awareness of itself, and that it takes any outside intrusion as an act of aggression, even when what is happening is without intent.

-----

I had a lot more written out on the Alien but as that was annoyingly inconclusive, full of repetition and dead ends, and rambled on for quite a bit I will instead dump that in another post, as it seems a shame to just let it slip into the void.

The End

I think it is pretty much a given that the Kane at the end of the movie isn't the original Kane right? No need to argument anything here.
But just in case: apart from his own hesitant admission and the visual confirmation we get from the phosphorus-suicide of original Kane on the video tape found in the lighthouse, I'll also touch on Kane and the Kane duplicate's memories in a moment.

What merits more attention is the identity of the Lena at the end.

This is the one that most people have problems with: The vision of Lena's eyes lighting up like duplicate Kane's throws everything into the obvious conclusion; that this is not the original Lena, the one who goes into the Shimmer, but the duplicate created in the lighthouse.
They show the same eye-shimmer, so they must be the same, right?
But all this means is that they both have been touched by the Shimmer's rules, and that they have a mutating agent inside of themselves. It does not necessarily mean that it's been put there the same way.

In my opinion, and I think there's no question about this; it's the original Lena that returns.

There's a few ways to arrive at this conclusion.
Other than of course the purely visual, where one sees the Lena with the phosphorus grenade losing her Lena-shape and reverting back into the shimmering alloy-shape, right before the lighthouse door closes:
There's no reason why original Lena would revert to a previous shimmer-alloy state, not to mention that it then, fully ablaze, traipses through the lighthouse over the course of 2 minutes or so, to then collapse into the room beneath the lighthouse: something that is beyond the capabilities of any human, I should think.

It's hard though to give a fool-proof argumentation for the explanation because we know of only 2 instances of a human duplicate in the movie. The Kane-duplicate, and the Lena-duplicate. Rules for 1 can not be used to make assumptions about the rules regarding the other. 1 does not make a system after all, and though we get flashes of the creation of the Kane-duplicate, they are nowhere near as detailed as what we see of the Lena-recreation.
But, this is quite simply the way the movie works and if it doesn't then all bets are off and there's no way to offer up one explanation above others. If all else fails, because of how this movie was created; always assume: dialogue before visuals.

Memories:

Think of the Kane-duplicate, who we know is the Kane-duplicate, not knowing anything upon his return to their home at the start of the movie. He looks at Lena and states he recognizes her, but he doesn't remember her.
At the movie's end he hesitatingly admits he doesn't think he is Kane. But he reaches out to her because needs comfort, and she responds because they have chemistry, because this is the original Kane replicated, yes: The physical aspect is there, the chemistry, and the consciousness is there, but all the memories that inform an identity are not. For whatever reason, we can deduce that even though the duplication process seems perfect, it is an incomplete one as it is duplication without the original's memories.

As for Ending-Lena; she is being interrogated after the events on the beach and supplies an account from a time before having gone into the shimmer, and in her time in the Shimmer we are supplied to flashbacks in which she cheats on her husband. Ergo: the Lena who went in is the Lena who went out, albeit completely physically altered as is evidenced by the tattoo on her arm and the shimmer in her eyes which demonstrates that her time inside of the Shimmer and her contact with her duplicate has genetically altered her.

-----

I feel like this is a good time to address this: Oddly, most everyone, in order to make sense of the movie's ending, relies on the movie's use of tattoos, specifically, on a single tattoo, which appears on at least 4 arms. (Anya, Lena, Lena-R, Man in the tape)

The mistake is in the assumption that the tattoo originates from inside the shimmer. See picture below; Anya (Lady on the outermost right), right before the team is about to enter the Shimmer. It's not so clear in the picture... because it isn't meant to be. But if you take a look at the scene itself, it's undeniable: Anya's tattoo is present before her entering the Shimmer, and Lena through the Shimmer's refraction also ends up with the Ouroboros-tattoo on her arm.

There's no good definitive explanation for it but I'm of the opinion as the marine/army dude, the one with the mutated intestines in the tape, has the same tattoo at the time of the filming, I'm assuming that he and Anya either served in the same outfit, or that the tattoo is a Southern Reach tattoo.
Southern Reach is the organization, or something, in charge of the monitoring of the Shimmer.

Bottomline though, is that it doesn't really matter.  It's a red herring; all it indicates is just another way in how the Shimmer's refracting properties work.

Consciousness

If like many you're still hung up on an alien antagonistic force, than any argument involving memories is moot, of course. Because in this case, there's no reason to take it as a given that this force isn't lying about what it remembers. Anything it says might as well be a lie, and nothing it says can be used for argumentation.

So I also have another argument. Based, once again on how I see the movie's rules.

1. To whit: One of the movie's most fucked up scenes, in my opinion;

 mainly because I read too much Karl-May as a child and around that time also somehow stumbled on an account of the last hours of Timothy Treadwell, the so-called Grizzly Man, and read and re-read the particulars with a certain horrified fascination... 

Some things one doesn't really forget.

The scene, where after Cassie's demise, the four remaining members of the team make camp in a house, gives the key to understanding what happens in the climax.

This house, incidentally, has more than a passing resemblance to Lena and Kane's house.

I'm undecided if this is artistic license, see those couple of frames of Kane sitting or standing in a similar position to Lena? Or if this is just another consequence of the Shimmer's refracting properties.

Before, during the team's rest at Fort Amaya, Cassie dies, dragged away screaming into the dark, where an already heavily mutated bear twists her leg nastily out of shape, and eats out her throat, more specifically; eats out her throat and consumes her voice box.

Fast forward to where 3 members of the team are on the cusp of being tortured by the seriously unhinged 4th member; Anya, and where the bear then, after mauling Anya, strolls in and proceeds to scream in Cassie's voice at the tied up team.

It paces around them, venting an almost continuous horrifying mimicry echo of Cassie's death wail, as if it expects something from these three women. It stares at them, screaming literally in their faces, looking for a response. It plants its jaws almost lovingly around Josie's shoulder before it is assaulted by the dying Anya.

In the resulting mayhem the creature dies.

At the time, without the benefit of Josie's explanation, I took this scene to be purely mimicry: An animal copying a sound to lure in its victims. And why wouldn't you? It's not too far-fetched as it's already present in known nature.

On top of that: The Shimmer had already shown its remarkable properties; given that the bear consumed Cassie's voice box it seemed likely that it could have become part of the bear's anatomy, allowing the beast to copy Cassie's voice, as it heard and remembered it to be at the time.

But of course, there are some details off with this explanation. Most importantly, it doesn't explain its self-apparent air of expectation, as if it is looking for something.

But then, the following morning, we get Josie's explanation of the night's events.

"It was so strange hearing Sheppard's voice in the mouth of that creature last night.

I think part of her mind became part of the creature that was killing her.

Imagine dying frightened and in pain and having that as the only part of you which survives.

I wouldn't like that at all..."

Add to this little segment, some of Ventress' final dialogue:

"Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts until not one part remains."

And now we have the full picture:

The bear's consciousness had a small part of Cassie's added to it; a terrified consciousness that only wanted her friends to help her, that could do nothing but try and reach out to them while it died screaming in fear and pain; this is why the bear doesn't immediately attack as it paces around the tied up team; the part of the bear's consciousness that houses those few remaining bits of Cassie's demands help from these women. But it is a small part, and its wants are unclear to the bear, so its baser instincts begin to assert dominance as it finally receives a reaction from Josie, and proceeds to do what it wants before being stopped by Anya.

This is about consciousness intermingling.

So, from this we can go our climax:

2. Lena and The lighthouse dance.

At the movie's climax, Lena enters the lighthouse to discover a video tape that shows her husband killing himself. He ignites a phosphorus grenade and sets himself on fire right after telling something that looks like him to make it out of the Shimmer in order to find her.

Before this can be properly processed by Lena,

and here we could say something about inept crafting again, but that would be uncharitable I think; I've settled on Lena being just completely bewildered by one thing after another enough, to be hung up on something as trivial as the apparent suicide of her husband

she is distracted by an eerie wailing coming out of the hole in the ground where something crashed into the lighthouse from above to plow into the rock beneath; it is a tunnel leading to the very heart of the Shimmer.

Going down it she finds a strangely shifting chamber, with a seemingly unhinged Ventress seated on a dais at its center, spouting seemingly nonsensical lines before she dissolves into a beautiful glowing light show.

Said light show swirls around the room before forming something in the heart of the chamber.

And here we get our first glimpse of the alien. Except, it is not the alien at all. This floating thing, is just the way for the alien intrusion to almost perfectly recreate the complex human organism.

There is no goal here, unless that goal is to replicate, to duplicate. There is no intent, unless that intent is to copy. There is no design, there is no long-term plan, there is no far-fetched goal of annihilating the human race or whatever.  There is no consciousness. All it does is act like a cell.

And this is actually a clever marriage of director's intent and viewer bias.

As a human you can't help but initially view any action of the alien that the movie provides, this apparent interaction; as hostile intent. But like Lena says, there isn't any interaction on the part of the alien, all it did was react to the input she gave it. There's a very natural skewing of perception here, and it's all on your side; you see an alien that does something with you, so it is either hostile or ally.

Lena is mesmerized by the shifting mass and stares in wonder. Then the forge at the construct's heart sucks in a drop of her blood, her DNA, and begins to replicate it. Stage 1.

I call this a forge, because both in purpose and in visuals that is what it most resembles.

I label the whole thing the Forge-Construct.

And quite soon, at the heart of the chamber a shimmering humanoid shape stands revealed. It approaches Lena who, propelled by her experiences as a soldier, opens fire.

But as this does seemingly no damage, she turns her back on the creature and flees back into the room above, where she finds it is already waiting for her, somehow having instantaneously transported from one chamber to the other.

Now things get interesting.

Gunfire having proven useless, Lena tries to leave the room but finds that every thing she does the shimmering alloy-shape mimics, and every step that she takes brings the creature the same step and the same movement closer to her. We are at stage 2.

In desperation she grabs the tripod with the camera and smacks it into the creature, who, having no tripod, imperfectly imitates her attack and slaps her easily to the ground, temporarily rendering her unconscious.

For a moment the creature stands with its back to Lena, before it turns around and moves itself to lie on the ground in imitation of our downed heroine.

As Lena starts to rise, groggy and disoriented, it mimics this too, keeping her in sight all the while.

As Lena is again aware of where she is, she makes a dash towards the door, desperately trying to open it to make her escape, before the creature slams into her, having again mimicked her movements. 

They are pressed together against the door, but while Lena is pushing off from the door trying to get away, she pushes against the creature, who then of course pushes back. She can't breathe, and begins to lose consciousness.

And then, as her consciousness begins to surrender, begins to let go, something happens.

Stage 3. There is a moment, where the desperation in Lena's eyes, turns into awareness, and into realization, if not understanding.

Because of what has already been established with Cassie and the bear, though it is slightly different here, this is where Lena's consciousness is imprinted on the alloy-shape.

I say it is different, because I stand by my interpretation that there is no alien consciousness inside of the alloy-creature: it is, before this stage, purely a construct, solely imbued with the imperative to mimic and copy the original DNA donor.

It is also different, because neither the alloy-creature or Lena dies here, which gives us something rather remarkable in stage 3's continuation.

It gets a little weird, because as Lena passes out, the Alloy creature, more than ever similar, and dreadfully connected to Lena in this moment, both becomes and keeps following Lena's movements.

Their consciousness has connected, and as one of these two passes out through the actions of the other, what does this do to that other, who has only become connected now in this moment of supreme loss of self, this headlong barreling into the void? It's something that's a little hard to explain or even interpret because it's such a mind-boggling concept, but the consequence is that they sag against each other, before

with a certain artistic license

they fall in perfect identical symmetry back in the centre of the room.

Then, after a little while on the floor, having fallen on the ground with their backs to each other, in perfect mirror, they both sit up, breathing in perfect synchronicity, before tottering upright in the exact same way, without ever even looking at each other.

As they stand there, we read on Lena's face another moment of dawning awareness, presumably also present in the alloy-shape, whereupon she whirls around and faces the creature, who in that moment has done the exact same thing.

From here on, Lena has a plan, while the alloy-shape's imperatives are still not finished with it and which continues mimicking Lena until its imperatives run out and becomes, as the Kane-duplicate before it, a final self.

There are some problems here, because we've seen minds existing together in the same moment before in this movie; In the Kane and Kane-duplicate who interact with each other in radically different ways; one killing himself while the other looking on, and in the two deer, spotted by Lena in the forest where they move in almost perfect synchronicity.

But as the human consciousness is an infinitely more complex thing than an animal's instinctual imperative this can likely be discarded.

It's also possible, once that the duplication process is fully completed, this consciousness-link would shut down.

It's hard to tell, because there are no clear examples of this.

The movie coats itself in a number of possibilities, while refusing to give rules, thereby allowing for most of these possibilities.

Lena and her burgeoning duplicate move towards Kane's gear where Lena reaches in to grab a phosphorus grenade, while the alloy shape looks expectantly on.

She holds it out towards the shape, which reaches out and clasps the grenade as well.

Their hands and fingers touch, and the final stage commences.

Stage 4. Lena's every physical attribute as it is in that moment is imprinted onto the alloy shape and the stage ends, with a perfect duplicate of Lena, with her nature and consciousness as it is at that time, minus her memories.

Again, why the process fails to reproduce memories (experiences) I don't know.

As the two Lena's stand there, the original lets the safety pin slip out, before dashing out of the building, leaving the duplicate-Lena, no longer a slave to the duplication imperatives, holding the bag.

-----

From our experiences with the Kane-duplicate, we know that there's a point where the duplication process ends, where the duplicate has become as much of the original as it is going to be.

This happens through a few stages, and we know them because of Lena's experience, though we don't get to know if stage 4 is the final stage. Presumably, because it would be artistically ideal, it is.

1. Blood/DNA gets sucked into the forge-construct, which is used to re-create this world's most complex organisms; humans. A shimmer-alloy duplicate is created, imbued with the possibility of the donor DNA's most current form to be made manifest.

2. The duplicate imitates the original as much as it can, seeking to become identical.

3.The duplicate imprints consciousness of the original via proximity and touch

4. The duplicate copies every last physical attribute of the original donor by touch once consciousness has been linked, in order to become as perfectly up to date with the original as it can.

From this point on the duplicate is finished.

There is no goal beyond this however: like a cell duplicates itself in micro, the forge-construct duplicates the human's body in macro. 

It all comes from the cell. Concept, execution and rules.

Memories preventing self-destruction

So then, reasons:
To come back to that part where we talk about the movie's characters self-destructing: With our main protagonist, Lena, this self-destructive tendency manifests itself in her destabilization of her marriage by cheating on her husband.

However, Lena's reason, very integral to the movie's climax, for entering the Shimmer, the so-called suicide mission, is different than from the other characters. It is Lena who is here trying to heal something, fix something; She goes on what might be a suicide mission, and remember; her husband has already made it out, she is here, not because of self-destructive urges, but first and foremost to try and save that husband.

For the original Lena, standing in front of her duplicate, there are still the memories of a husband outside of the Shimmer, even if the identity of that party at the time is still in question.


Consciousness enabling self-destruction

It's why the Lena-duplicate continues to commit self-destruction when the phosphorus grenade goes off, because she does not have the memories of a husband outside of the Shimmer. She does not have that hope for continuation, as is evinced by her touching the corpse of the original Kane, the husband who Lena at the moment of her consciousness-copying identifies most as being her husband, having just come face to face with his death. And from this moment onward the duplicate is ruled by her self-destructive nature and lets the fire do its work. She chooses Annihilation for the Shimmer because as Josie said earlier:

"Ventress wants to understand it, you (original Lena) want to fight it...".

There's also the dubious artistic license imparted by Ventress' and Lena's earlier conversation; 'Isn't all life hardcoded to self-destruct?" Which alludes to the particular part in the movie where Lena and Kane are in bed and she explains to him how mortality is a flaw encoded in each cell. Without any imperatives to shunt her forward duplicate-Lena follows this rule programmed at the cellular level.
But again, this idea doesn't stroke very well, even though it does strengthen the theme.

Be reminded here also that the Kane-duplicate was given a mission, a reason to live, by his original, to go and find Lena.
And that all that the Lena-duplicate was given by her original, was a live grenade.

Is there a hierarchy? Must the duplicate follow the original? I don't know.

I do know, that in the ending scene, it is Kane who reaches out to Lena, implying autonomy and not mindless dependency after either a period of time, or when the original has died.
Again, there are not enough examples to pinpoint rules by.

So then, to reiterate; when self-destruction by fire becomes apparent: As a perfect copy, with everything but the memories, those memories of her husband which are Lena's reason for being in the Shimmer: the hope for retrieval of her husband (or something like her husband), the hope for continuation and a happy end, without this way forward, all that influences the Lena-duplicate are Lena's self-destructive urges, her will to fight "it" and the current Lena-consciousness; likely also appalled at itself in recognition of it not being the original, just as End-Kane hesitantly admits it doesn't think is the original Kane, whereupon it needs comforting.
But where duplicate-Kane takes the easier way out, as per his programming, duplicate-Lena fights and annihilates, both herself and the source of her grief, as per her programming.

Artistic Character Death

-Josie indulges in physical self-harm; the reason given:

"She's tried to kill herself?"

"No, I think the opposite, trying to feel alive."

Josie ends up literally turning into a tree. Literal blooming life. Can't get more symbolic than that.

-Ventress wants nothing in the face of her own death. Just to see the lighthouse and understand the mystery at its heart. Once she realizes understanding is not possible there's nothing left for her, so she dissolves as she gives herself over to... Annihilation.

-Anya who practically introduces herself with her makeshift theory of whether something killed the previous teams or whether they went crazy and killed each other, seems to get confirmation of the latter theory when she views the tape found in Fort Amaya. From that moment on, because she thinks so much about it, her body starts to change as the man's body did in the tape.
She becomes paranoid, even though she really has a reason, as her became-crazy theory seems to have become true; with Lena lying and forcing the team deeper into the Shimmer's heart towards certain death.
And she would have hurt or murdered her team mates, until the bear, something inside the Shimmer, killed her, neatly allowing her to inhabit both of her theories at once.

- Cassie:

"In a way it is two bereavements; my little girl and the person I once was."

dies a second time, becoming an even smaller, lesser part of the person she once was as she lives on inside of the bear's consciousness, until finally her identity dies a third time alongside the creature that killed her body.