Jeff VanderMeer’s Nightmare Fuel

“It’s not going to attack you,” Jeff VanderMeer promises when an alligator creeps past us just after dawn. I’ve never seen one in the wild before. It smells like a leather-bound book that’s been sitting at the bottom of a bog for thirty years. By the time I take my phone out for a picture, the armored reptile has already disappeared into the salt marsh. “I’m quite fond of them,” VanderMeer says. “We see them as unintelligent because they’re so different from us, but they’re actually very social and complex.”