Ballard, J. G.

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the atrocity exhibition
brain-terrorism
Difficult to start, a chore to finish
Mind blowing, in every sense of the term
Not much fun.

The Atrocity Exhibition
J.G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Re/Search Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1889307033

Amazon.com

Easily one of the 20th century's most visionary writers, J. G. Ballard still lives far ahead of his time. Called his "prophetic masterpiece" by many, The Atrocity Exhibition practically lies outside of any literary tradition. Part science fiction, part eerie historical fiction, part pornography, its characters adhere to no rules of linearity or stability. This reissued edition features an introduction by William S. Burroughs, extensive text commentary by Ballard, and four additional stories. Of specific interest are the illustrations by underground cartoonist and professional medical illustrator Phoebe Gloeckner. Her ultrarealistic images of eroticism and destruction add an important dimension to Ballard's text.

Book Description

The Atrocity Exhibition is J.G. Ballard's most complex, disturbing work, with fabulous photos by Ana Barrado and artwork by Phoebe Gloeckner.

Customer Reviews:

the atrocity exhibition.......2006-07-13

the atrocity exhibition is a watershed and seminal work in the canon of jg ballard. ballard is regarded and indeed classified as a writer in the 'science fiction' genre. if you consider science fiction to be the domain of 'star wars' et al. then reappraise, reevaluate and restart your imaginative capacity NOW.
ballard bestrides the real essence of what science fiction is all about. along with genre peers like william s burroughs and philip k dick ballard lets our everyday reality somersault into malleable form in order to glimpse through its creases as it bends and flips. and that is what science fiction is truly about.
the atrocity exhibition retells the imaganitive interpretation of a world gone vacant and disused despite its technological grandeur and will to power. the narrative dispells the need to lurk in the shadow of pessimmism for a dystopian world view of 'the future'. like pk dick, ballard is recounting a parallel universe that we are, in fact, already in yet refuse, deny and thus - vainly - extricate ourselves from. ballard simply removes the blinkers from our eyes and reveals the panaramic vision of 'our times'. less a parallel universe than a 'concurrent' one.
one aspect of ballards narrative(s) in general and (just one) significant difference when compared to the likes of philip k dick and burroughs, is the total lack of paranoia permeating the text.
ballard in my view is more prophet than paranoid.
the atrocity exhibition is one man's coming to sense with the 'real' world by tortuous and torturous understanding... he has to go 'mad' first.
i got my copy through RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS and anybody interested in the left of centre (and therefore) more substantial literary experience should check them out post-haste.

brain-terrorism .......2006-02-09

"The Atrocity Exhibition is the industrial brain-terrorism of a drug fetus and JG Ballard rapes the digital-chimpanzee's naked body in the corpse feti=streaming circuit of the abolition world." - Kenji Siratori, author of Blood Electric

Difficult to start, a chore to finish.......2005-11-24

Ballard makes several keen insights in this book (many of them startlingly prescient). However, digging those nuggets of clarity out of the surrounding mess is difficult and often unrewarding work. The repetetive and disjointed nature of the narrative quickly leads to confusion--confusion about the characters, their motives, and the surrounding events. And perhaps that was intentional, but it doesn't make for a satisfying read.

"The Assasination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race" was one of the few bright spots in the narrative, but not quite bright enough for me to consider this book as anything more than a failed experiment.

Mind blowing, in every sense of the term.......2005-09-20

This is a very difficult book, but also very rewarding for people with patience. I usually find experimental writing gimmicky, but the Atrocity Exhibition is haunting, paranoid, claustrophobic. Readers should be in the write state of mind to deal with a sometimes unpleasant read; those who do are usually transformed by it. This is a stunning work; I only give it 4 stars instead of 5 because of the edition...

Not much fun........2003-07-18

This book is more effective as a piece of art than as an actual story which you can pick up and read. Imagine if someone with a car crash fetish started having a lot of sick hallucinations, and he got together with William S. Burroughs to try to write down what he was seeing in his mind. I am a fan of these experimental or post-modern writing styles. I read Pynchon, DeLillo, Palahniuk, etc. Still, I found it difficult to appreciate The Atrocity Exhibition. I knowing about it, let alone reading it, does give you some credibility among the really hip, so you might want to pick it up just for that.

Average customer rating:

Humanity, stripped to its core
disappointing
Empire of the Sun
Survival amidst death
Coming of Age

Empire of the Sun
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0743265238

Book Description

<CENTER>The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.</CENTER>

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Customer Reviews:

Humanity, stripped to its core.......2007-05-24

My first introduction to this story was, like many others, through Steven Spielberg's adaptation. For me, the hauntingly beautiful "Suo Gan" that serves as that movie's de facto theme song perfectly captures the fragile yet enduring beauty of humanity that Spielberg so successfully captures in his movie version. The movie abounds with poignant moments of hope, warmth, and exhilaration amongst the great struggles that befall Jim and his band of acquaintances. I enjoyed the movie, and Jim's story and haunting memory of Suo Gan made a lasting impression.

Years later, I encountered the original story--J.G. Ballard's novel that served as Spielberg's inspiration. Just as the newsreels and magazines that tell of the war fascinate Jim in the book because they describe a war so different than the one he knows, so does Spielberg's movie tell a different tale from Ballard's book. The events are by and large the same, but the tone of the story, the horrors experienced by Jim, and the lessons and impressions instilled by the novel are on a different order of magnitude from the movie. I enjoyed the movie on its own merits, but I imagine the order in which you encounter them colors your impression--for people like me who saw the movie first, it was easy to appreciate the movie, and then be blown away by the power of the book. For those who read the book first, I would imagine the movie would be a disappointing, sanitized version of the original work.

The novel overpowers the reader from start to finish by Ballard's stark account of Jim's survival against all odds, in conditions stacked heavily against him. Death, betrayal, illness, and hunger surround Jim and yet somehow he always managed to survive because he never despairs, never gives up, always keeps his wits about him, and as he himself explains, because he "takes nothing for granted." The world of WWII Shanghai strips humanity to its bare, naked, ugly core. Growing up in this environment, Jim becomes a remarkably complex character in spite of (or perhaps because of) his young age. Jim is intelligent, naive, loyal, callous, hopeful, curious, delusional, and yet oddly lucid--all at the same time. The image of flight is strong throughout the story, as a form of escape, and in some ways the only vestige of childhood granted to this boy as he goes through a life full of cruel ironies--first, the inability despite repeated attempts to surrender to an enemy that he needs infinitely more than they need him; then, the odd realization that this "enemy" is his greatest protector and in many instances, friend; finally, that even with the war over he is in greater danger and further from his parents than ever. War, peace, friend, foe, cause, effect, even the distinction between life and death ... these cease to have meaning for Jim. Finally, Jim is saved in an almost deus ex machina fashion by the heroic Dr. Ransome, a man whose selfless actions mildly amuse and baffle Jim, who cannot quite understand this brand of humanity which is quite different from the one he learned through his own experiences. Ransome's life is one that takes certain things for granted. Jim has not been afforded this luxury.

Jim's reunion with his parents is another, critical difference between the movie and the book. The "happily-ever after" ending in the movie is filled with hope and relief. Jim and his parents don't recognize each other at first. Then they do. This symbolizes that the war is finally over for Jim, now he can go back to a normal life. The End. In the book, however, the ending is much more nuanced. Despite returning "home" to Shanghai, Jim's home will forever be Lunghua in the novel version. Normalcy will never be a suburban life in England, for Jim it is wartime Shanghai. The odds of Jim being able to live what most of us would call a "normal life" are practically zero ... after all, he has just experienced a lifetime of events more "real" and vivid than "normal life" could ever be; the war never ends for Jim. Seeing the far-from-normal life Ballard himself has lead, and the fiction he has written, one realizes that even though "Jim" and "J.G. Ballard" may not be the same person (one crucial difference--Ballard is never separated from his parents), Ballard is still the adult that Jim would have grown up to be. It is this honest and uncompromising portrayal of Jim as a true tragic hero that separates the book from the movie, and makes this book one of the truly great accounts of surviving a brutal war that knows and shows no mercy.

disappointing.......2007-05-13

The movie was fantastic, and usually a good movie has a good book at its root. In this case, the writing didn't pull one into the story and let the reader identify with the characters.

Empire of the Sun.......2007-01-19

Book was delivered in excellent condition with fast reliable service from merchant.

Survival amidst death.......2006-04-25

A most incredible book... It holds the reader glued to every page, not unlike the grip of death which encased Shangai after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.

The story, based on J.G. Ballard's actual experiences, is about a young British teenager who lives with his parents in Shangai at the eve of Pearl Harbor and is then interned by the Japanese from 1942-1945 in the Lunghua prison camp near Shanghai. It is truly mesmerizing, in the negative sense unfortunately, because of the countless moments of inherent evil that arose as a result of war. The places-airfield runways made of bones of dead Chinese, a make-shift cemetery full of corpses with extremities sticking out, canals full of dead bodies, floating flower coffins with Chinese babies-the people-an opportunistic American soldier who profits from death, Japanese soldiers bent on brutality, an American doctor who does everything to save the sick and dying, the indifference of a British woman to a sick boy-and events-the killing of a Chinese coolie, the never-ending deaths of sick prisoners, the death march to Nantao-exemplify that evil and are described with such incredible detail and clarity as to be almost permanently engraved in the mind of the reader.

Through all the death and destruction, of which almost every chapter of the book is filled with, lives a young British teenager (the author himself, but written in 3rd person) who has an incredible will to survive. The question of his morality is ever-present if we judge his thoughts and actions solely; yet in the face of starvation and omnipresent death, his story is one of a smart young boy who is trying his best to survive. When viewed under those circumstances and compared to the actions of others in the book, his story can be perceived in a more positive yet still overwhelmingly sad light. Indeed, it is the author's reconstruction of his thoughts in particular that divulge the horror of the events he experienced. One of the most memorable concerns the death march to Nantao:

"Dr. Ransome had recruited a human chain from the men sitting on the embankment below the trucks, and they passed pails of water up to the patients.

Jim shook his head, puzzled by all this effort. Obviously they were being taken up-country so that the Japanese could kill them without being seen by the American pilots. Jim listened to the Shell man's wife crying in the yellow grass. The sunlight charged the air above the canal, an intense aura of hunger that stung his retinas and remind him of the halo formed by the exploding Mustang. The burning body of the American pilot had quickened the dead land. It would be for the best if they all died; it would bring their lives to an end that had been implicit ever since the Idzumo had sunk the Petrel and the British hand surrendered at Singapore without a fight.

Perhaps they were already dead. Jim lay back and tried to count the motes of light. This simple truth was known to every Chinese from birth. Once the British internees had accepted it, they would no longer fear their journey to the killing ground...."

Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the book in the 1986 movie of the same name is insufficient at best. While the cinematography and acting are good, the crux of the story-the cruelty and horrors of post-Pearl Harbor Shangai-is conveniently glossed over. It's as if Spielberg decided to change the script from an "R" to a "G". The problem is that the latter version of the movie no longer resembles the former and effectively does injustice to the thousands of people (and millions more not included in the scope of the book)-including the author himself-who suffered and/or died in Lunghua prison and Shangai from 1942-1945 at the hands of the Japanese.

Coming of Age.......2005-07-08

I first became acquainted with this story thru the marvelous Steven Spielberg movie. I thought it was such a powerful story that I bought the book the day after I saw the movie.

The story is an account of the author experiences after war breaks while he is in Shanghai. Separated from his parents and sent to a concentration camp Jim has to learn to survive on his own by creating alliances with other prisoners.

This is a coming of age story that will stay with you for a long time. Highly recommended.

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GOVT 490 -- BALLARD's BOOK
GOVT 490 - Book Review
GOVERNMENT 490 SUMMER A- A. ALHAJ
Govt 490
GOv 490 crash review

Crash: A Novel
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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J. G. Ballard's graphic, violent novel is controversial wherever it is read, even on Amazon.com's own Web page! The book's characters are obsessed with automobile accidents and are determined to narrate the horrors of the car crash as luridly as possible. In the words of the novel's protagonist, the wounds caused by automobile collisions are "the keys to a new sexuality born from a perverse technology." Read this novel and learn why David Cronenberg, who had previously adapted Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch for the screen, fought to turn it into his latest film.

Book Description

In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an intentionally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A classic work of cutting edge fiction, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.

Customer Reviews:

GOVT 490 -- BALLARD's BOOK.......2007-06-22

J. G. Ballard's "Crash" is a novel that puts together ideas foreign to one another in a masterful, at times tasteless, depiction of a world where technology mixes with sex, speed, and cars.

Violence is an essential to this book. And it offers a glimpse into the inner workings of a demented, but understandable human mind. Ballard shows the reader the impacts of technology on humanity and the society we are all involved in. To be able to write about such a perverted, twisted mindset and yet not fully disgust it's reader is the key to Ballard's work.

To see an object like an automobile as erotic and arousing is so foreign to most people--Ballard tackles this idea head on in this work.

Let's not miss the point. Ballard didn't write this novel to gross us out; he wrote the novel to literately show us just how much humanity has come to rely on technology. To the point where technology can change our most animal, non-technological feature--sex. This book will become more and more relevant as we continue to develop new technologies, and I find it more interesting that was written decades ago, where we were much less reliant on technology as we are today.

Concepts like emotion from pain, sex, cars, technology and humanity are what Ballard attempts to link in this book. "Erotic fiction"? I think not. A gross depiction of where we could be heading? Perhaps.

GOVT 490 - Book Review.......2007-06-22

A look into the fringes of human sexuality, Crash written by J. G. Ballard explores a world where technology is the only means to reach sexual satisfaction. A surreal account of what drives humans to seek new methods of sexual exploration. Taking the reader to the fringes of society, Crash reveals the level to which humans will take sexual experience. Ballard ultimately reveals that humans are dependent on technology to reach sexual satisfaction.
Ballard's use of automobile crashes as a vehicle for heightened sexual enlightenment is perverse. His use of the automobile to represent technology is twisted, yet allows the reader to relate to technology as something tangible. In addition the morbid obsession with crashes and sex is shocking enough to make the point that humans are losing their connection to each other, and must turn to the assistance of technology to reconnect with each other.
Crash focuses on the experiences of narrator James Ballard and the shady Robert Vaughn. After his initial car crash, Ballard learns of others who use car crashes as a means to sexual satisfaction. Ballard learns of Vaughn's obsession with Elizabeth Taylor, and his intent to be in a car crash with her. It is this obsession, which describes humanities need to connect to each other through the use of technology. To be in a car crash with Elizabeth Taylor is how Vaughn will fulfill his sexual desires and reconnect with society, personified by Elizabeth Taylor.
Ballard also seeks out car crashes in order to fulfill his sexual desires. Unable to fulfill his needs at home or with others, Ballard realizes that he cannot be satisfied unless the act is associated with a crash. He has lost his connection to humanity. He is not able to associate to others sexually without the assistance of technology. It is only through the act of car crashes and sex that Ballard is able to reconnect with humanity.
The experience of car crashes and sex as a means for humans to reconnect to each other is perverse. The description of wounds caused by a car crash is a reminder of how powerfully connected sex and technology are. This perverseness is described when a sex act is performed on a thigh wound. Ballard may have used this to further detail how anything associated with technology, is preferred over the norm, in this case normal sexual intercourse.
Crash is perverse, twisted, and taboo. The grotesque descriptions leave little to be desired. While readers may become acclimated to these descriptions, they are necessary to show the extremes that humans will go to to reach sexual gratification. J. G. Ballard's world exists on the fringes of society that many hope to never experience. I would not recommend this book for reading enjoyment, but merely for instructional purposes to show how humans have lost their connection to humanity. The extremes that are described in this book go too far.

GOVERNMENT 490 SUMMER A- A. ALHAJ.......2007-06-21

The Novel Crash by J.G Ballard revolves around sex, cars, and society. Furthermore, the novel stresses on societies obsession and fascination with cars and how appealing they are. Some characters mentioned in the book by J.G Ballard find automobiles erotic and arousing.

In truth it seems that a lot of the characters mentioned in the book have a very strange train of thought, that some readers may go as far as labeling them as perverts.

J.G Ballard has a unique way when it comes to narrating his ideas in the novel. For one, the themes from the story are about how technology has a great influence on society, yet Ballard links this influence to sexual arousal and stimulation.

Additionally, Ballard focuses on the human body with much detail from the very beginning of the novel. He focused on the female body and on the male body, where he showed his talent of taking a simple fact or feature about the male and female bodies and elaborating on it throughout the entire novel.

I did not enjoy reading the book very much, it is sick, twisted and has a lot of sexual depiction that run a disturbing graphic train in the reader's mind.

Govt 490.......2007-06-21

Crash written by J.G. Ballard is a sick, twisted, disturbing and overly demented fiction novel that attempts to explore what J.G. Ballard would consider to be society's ever increasing reliance on the automobile as a go-between in human relationships and or interactions.
Though J.G. Ballard states that his reasons for writing this novel were to uncover just how much mankind has become dependent on technology be it mostly the automobile to help carry us through our day to day lives it is not clear as to if Ballard was writing a novel about mankind's dependence on technology or a novel of mankind's sick and perverse love for technology.
Throughout the novel J.G. Ballard takes the reader through the thoughts, fantasies, and nauseating actions of the main character named James Ballard, any connection to the author one would hope not and Vaughan as they fornicate, drive under the influence of drugs and reap havoc on those around them in their automobile of destruction.

GOv 490 crash review.......2007-06-20

Sex, cars, and death when combined spin a web of obsession. J.D. Ballard's Crash, follows the lives of those obsessed with these three components. Through his tales of his own vivid car accidents and his numerous sexual encounters, Ballard's novel provides a deep insight into a world unknown to the vast majority of public.
Ballard's novel while originally supposed to explore technology and our culture, seeks further into the nature of the human and their inner desires. The perversion of the human body, the obsession with technology of the vehicle and the sexuality found in both of these elements leads Ballard's audience into a twisted and curvy road of the sexuality of our culture.
From the beginning of the novel, the focus of the human body is vivid and detailed. The description of the curves of a woman's thighs to the focus on the scarring which becomes a beautiful mark of danger survived. These deep sensuous details follow the inner-workings of the mind which many suppress and never speak of. However, Ballard explores these desires and obsession with not only the female body but also explores the sexuality of the male. His ability to turn the smallest, simplest act into a sexual invitation is fluid throughout the entire novel.
The body of Ballard's obsession isn't the regular human body most are seduced by. Rather Ballard finds beauty in the destruction of the body. The deep scarring and the injuries caused by car accidents entice and speak Ballard and his fellow accident obsessed friend, Vaughn.

2
I looked down at the scar tissue on her face, a seam left by an invisible zip three inches long, running from the corner of her right eye to the apex of her mouth with the naso-labial fold this new line formed an image like the palm lines of a sensitive and elusive hand. Reading an imaginary biography into this history of the skin, I visualized her as a glamorous but overworked medical student, breaking out of a long adolescence when she qualified as a doctor into a series of uncertain sexual affairs, happily climaxed by a deep emotional and genital union with her engineer husband, each ransacking the other's body like Crusoe stripping his ship. (43)
Ballard's obsession with the human body is closely, if not equaled by his obsession with the vehicle. His detailed descriptions of the contours of the dash of his car, provides extra meaning in his own accidents. The technology of his car only follows his concerns with the pain and injuries it could inflict on the body. He imagines the different parts of the car and what types of scarring they could possibly leave on the body. The curves of the body, follow the curves in a car, and only lead to more sexual thoughts and fantasies. The combined sexual elements of the car and the body flow together creating some of the most intense sexual experiences for Ballard and his fellow character in Crash. Their sexual interactions are heightened by the intense lingering danger of death in the background.
Perhaps it isn't the appeal of the vehicle crash that creates the intense sexual experience but the natural reactions of the nervous system. The endorphins of speed and
3
danger and risking ones life captures people all over the world everyday. These intense endorphins combined with the natural endorphins created by sexual interactions become addicting for the character sin the book. However, their fixation with the damages caused by the accidents is more than just endorphins; the characters are transfixed by the deformation of the body.
The connections between the technology in the novel and the people, is sometimes difficult to pull out. While they are obviously intrigued by the technology of the car, it is becomes questionable with its constant destruction. It seems most people cherish their obsession going to all ends to protect them; however the characters purposefully destroy theirs. This speaks to the mentality of the current generation. The new attitude that nothing is sacred and all can be easily replaced come through in the book.
The book's ultimate focus is the human need for sensuality and emotional release. While some cultures and religions sexuality is a taboo topic however, for the newest generation is has become a means of release and power. The emotional contact with others through these sexual acts creates an outreach and the connection with others that we all crave.

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Survival amidst death
Naah
Art in it's Finest Form!
Numbed by War
Horrifying

Empire of the Sun
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Buccaneer Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

Survival amidst death.......2006-04-25

Naah.......2005-07-11

Despite the hyperbolic praise on the back cover--best war novel of the twentieth century!!!--I found this Ballard offering so tedious and unpleasant that I gave up on it just thirty or so pages before the end. My main problem was with Jim; he's basically the only character and he's so unlikable that after a while you just don't feel like spending any more time with him. In Jim you also see the germ of the fascist leanings so evident in the main characters of the truly execrable--but at least readable--Ballard novels __Cocaine Nights__ and __Super-Cannes__.

In my opinion, if you want to read the semi-autobiographical adventures of a boy in an occupied country, you're better off with __The Painted Bird__. If you prefer books about life in prison camps, try __If This Is a Man__ or __The Truce__ by Primo Levi. You'll find in his books the humanity so glaringly absent in Ballard's.

Art in it's Finest Form!.......2005-04-03

This book is a true story about a boy named Jim. It is extremely depressing and dark in it's tone. It is also very beautiful "like Road to Perdition?" The movie was better than the book, "thanks to John Williams rich score."

This is an awesome book, buy the soundtrack too, it will give you the complete experience.

Numbed by War.......2004-09-30

J.G. Ballard's very unique, and especially trying, childhood is detailed in this autobiographical novel that offers powerful insights into war and history. Ballard, represented by "Jim" here, was a pre-teen living with his British expatriate parents in Shanghai on the eve of World War II. When war reached the city, Jim was separated from his parents and spent the next three years in a Japanese internment camp, learning to fend for himself under the most brutal conditions. Thus Ballard's distinct life experience leads to one of the most fascinating and terrifying stories you are likely to find on the horrors and miseries of war. Jim is so preoccupied with survival that he describes the most outlandish horrors with bland matter-of-fact understatement, including multitudes of corpses floating in rivers, scores of his fellow prisoners dying of starvation and disease, public executions, and even watching human bones being made into concrete. Along the way, the human psychological factors of war are revealed as Jim grows apart from his parents, loses affinity for his own countrymen, identifies with his oppressors, and wishes for the war to continue so he doesn't have to face the unknown future. Through Ballard's powerful writing, we can see exactly why Jim (and the young Ballard in real life) would reach these states of mind. This story also offers many intuitions on the futile nature of war itself, as shifting loyalties and factionalism blur the lines between friend and foe, and post-war anarchy becomes even more dangerous than the actual war. These are all hugely enlightening insights into war from a man who experienced it himself in a very distinct way. [~doomsdayer520~]

Horrifying.......2004-04-13

It can only be described as miraculous that Ballard survived what he wrote about in this thinly-disguised autobiography. At least twice he nearly starved to death. One of the ways he did survive was to detach himself from all of the horrors he witnessed--disease, starvation, murder, executions. And he was all of 11 years old. Yet, watching an interview with Ballard on TV once, he said, for all of what he went through, he rather still enjoyed himself, saying that he thrived on change. This book is simply amazing. It is relentingly horrifying, though.

Average customer rating:

The book that got me reading
The metaphors of the Sun
A bizarre story by a writer so very few Americans know of.

The Drought (Paladin Books)
J.G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Flamingo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

The book that got me reading.......1999-09-14

This is a frightening world so close to our own. A world where one small mistake leads to a world wide drought. A world where communities, lives and loves fall apart. This was the first book that moved me, and I can still smell the salt of those drying oceans. This is Ballard at his best.

The metaphors of the Sun.......1999-07-30

The Drought is another apocalyptic novel by futurist author J.G.Ballard. In narrative as spare and dry as the expanding deserts he envisions, Ballard describes an earthwide ecological catastrophe when industrial pollution causes a breakdown of the water cycle. Man and planet parch together. This disruption of the elements is accompanied by bizarre disturbances of the human landscape; old friendships fail while old enmities take sinister new courses; teams of "fishermen", their boats stranded in the dust of former harbors, cast their nets for a new, easier prey. Idiots become prophet kings in this redefined world. While not as vividly drawn as some of Ballard's other works, The Drought is an expertly written book; full of cryptic symbology, poetic flashes, casual violence and "Ballardian" prose. Another five star effort by this under appreciated writer.

A bizarre story by a writer so very few Americans know of........1997-04-17

The world dies. Ballard ends it with a flood in Drowned World, with wind in Wind from Nowhere and so on. In this book it is a drought. Think for yourself how you would write it. In a few paragraphs Ballard sucks you into his version, peopled with characters strange and as unbelievable as the premise. I know the exact location to shoot the movie of this, and have always cherished a secret dream that one day I'd help make that movie. Now comes Crash - and now millions of otherwise literary Americans will come to know some of JGB's work and some lucky soul with cash will buy the option to my dream. Ah well, the greater good is that JGB may become recognized at last as one of the finest minds in SF, a creator of worlds and a master of psychologies. Please read the book, but please leave the movie rights for me

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Great collection of short stories
The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
parts of this book are brilliant
Food for Thought
Some of the best short fiction

The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312278446

Book Description

First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. Tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology as viewed through a strong microscope, they were eerily prescient, and now shed great perspective on our computer-dominated culture. Ballard's voice and vision have long served as a font of inspiration for today's cyberpunks, the authors and futurists who brought the information age into the mainstream.AUTHORBIO: J.G. Ballard is the author of numerous books, including Empire of the Sun, the underground classic Crash, and The Kindness of Women. He is revered as one of the most important writers of fiction to address the consequences of twentieth-century technology. His latest book is Super-Cannes. He lives in England.

Customer Reviews:

Great collection of short stories.......2005-05-16

All the stories here are great. I really liked Manhole,the Cloud-sculptors of Coral D, and Thirteen for Centaurus. Most of the stories here really show Ballards visionary view of the world and its future.

The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard.......2004-12-21

I am much displeased to see that the current version of this story collection features such lackluster cover art. My original copy features a breathtaking portrait of a crowd and some cars in the desert, dwarfed by a towering pink collosus, while hand gliders dots the sky above and an enormous unicorn appears in the clouds. But what's most amazing is that this isn't just whimsy on the artist's part; it's actually a scene from one of Ballard's stories. That's the thing about Ballard. To him the idea that a ragtag but energetic crew of pilots might create enormous sculptures out of clouds in the desrt sky wasn't just possible, it seemed perfectly natural. His imagination ran to places that most science fiction authors couldn't even conceive, and once there it plopped into an armchair and started spinning a story that readers won't ever forget.

In Ballard's view, the human race is in decline. It's not because of human weakness or bad political decisions, it's just in the nature of the universe that we'll fade out, and (possibly) make way for something else. In "Concentration City", we live in a gigantic metorpolis stretching out in every direction with no open spaces. One man sets out on a quest to reach the city's edge. Along the way, he finds troubling signs of encroaching urban decay. But if nothing other than the city exists, does this spell the end of the world? In "The Deep End", technology sets of a chain reaction of unintended consequences, leading to Earth's oceans running dry. Most people depart for other planets, but one crotchety old-timer insists on staying behind, hoping to protect the world's last fish.

Other stories more directly tackle social issues. Some folks believe that modern society is too obsessed with schedules and deadlines. In "Chronopolis" we respond by outlawing clocks and watches. But as always there will be rebels who refuse to accept the revolution. Which side will win in the end? "Billennium" takes on overpopulation, while "Thirteen for Centaurus" looks at scientific ethics while also considering how easy it is to fool people ... or then again maybe not.

Among the most memorable images in this collection is "The Drowned Giant". The title is self explanatory: a giant washes up on shore near a major city. Ballard worries less about where it comes from, more about how we'll react to seeing it. While the unnamed narrator reflects on the giant's mythological appearance, the body ends up getting chopped up and used as fertilizer, while the bones decorate doorways around the city. You can try tagging metaphorical meaning to that ending if you wish, but to Ballard it was just one analysis of how modern society functions, which isn't too well.

parts of this book are brilliant.......2002-01-20

I would rate a few of the stories contained in this book with five stars, but other stories bring the total rating down to 3 stars. These are the stories which I would rate with 5 stars: "The Concentration City", "Chronopolis", "Thirteen for Centaurus", and "The Sublimiminal Man". "The Concentration City" is set somewhere in the future where somethings taken for granted now have long been forgotten. Hence things have to be reinvented and rediscovered. Because of "development" however, there are almost insurmountable barriers to reinvention. "Chronopolis" is a fascinating story of how using watches and clocks became illegal. "Thirteen for Centaurus" is about a space station supposedly travelling to a distant gallaxy. "The Sublimiminal Man" is aptly named because it is about exactly what the title says. The rest of the stories just didn't hold my interest. Some of them were very complex while others were simple but didn't have a good plot. Indeed, some of the stories had no plot at all. As far as climax is concerned, none of his stories had a climax. Most of his stories should be read mainly for the experience as opposed to a good meat and potatoes story. One thing about J.G. Ballard is that he certainly is very imaginative and creative.

Food for Thought.......2001-01-29

Ballard is one of the great "conceptualizers" of modern literature. The premises of his stories are the most immediately striking thing about them. Sometimes the story doesn't live up to the expectations he creates, but this is probably because he sets the bar so high.

In any case, whether a Ballard story is a total or only a partial success, it invariably provides plenty of food for thought. Three of them--"The Overloaded Man", "The Drowned Giant", and "The Garden of Time"--rank among my all-time favorites for their perfect fusion of speculative and mythic qualities. The more technology-based stories ("Concentration City", "The Voices of Time") are more interesting for their ideas than their execution.

In the introduction to this volume, Anthony Burgess hits on the central importance of Ballard's work: "Ballard considers that the kind of limitation that most contemporary fiction accepts is immoral... Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination." If you agree, buy this book.

Some of the best short fiction.......2000-10-20

This is some of the best short fiction ever written. A friend of mine lent me this book. I've read a lot more J.G Ballard because I loved this book so much, but have not enjoyed Ballards other work as much. Most of the stories deal with mans struggle to cope - with technolgy, with fear, with relationships with change etc. There's a few dud stories but most are home runs.

Average customer rating:

Brilliant Slow Burn Ballard
You'll hate this book, and that's why you should read it.
Nasty, implausible and incoherent
SUPER-CANNES
...

Super-Cannes: A Novel
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312284195

Book Description

Long-regarded as one of the true visionary writers of the twentieth century, J.G. Ballard was one of the first British writers of the post-War period to begin to see, and to map out in his fiction, the future course of our civilization. For forty years his unflinching eye has turned to the point where the advancing edge of our technological progress has worn away our inner humanity. Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, it is a virtual city-state in itself, with the latest in services and facilities for the most elite high-tech industries. Isolated and secure, overlooking the luxurious French Riviera, the residents lack nothing. Yet one day Doctor Greenwood from Eden-Olympia's clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and she and her husband Paul are given Dr. Greenwood's house as a residence.Unable to work while recovering from an accident, Paul spends his days taking a close look at the house where Dr. Greenwood shot himself and three hostages. He discovers clues in the house lead him to question Eden-Olympia's official account of the killings. Drawn into investigating the activities of the park's leading citizens, while Jane is lured deeper into Eden-Olympia's inner workings, Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain Eden-Olympia's smoothly-running surface. An experiment is underway at Eden-Olympia, an experiment in power and brutality. Soon Paul finds himself in race to save himself and his wife before they're crushed by forces that may be beyond anyone's control.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant Slow Burn Ballard .......2006-10-07

This book's story is told through the eyes of an english pilot (Paul Sinclair) who is recovering from knee injuries and unable to fly. The book begins with Paul accompanying his young wife Jane to Eden-Olympia - a semmingly utopian business park overlooking Cannes. They arrive to discover that they are taking over the house of Jane's predecessor - Greenwood - an englishman who went on an armed killing rampage through the park before turning his gun on himself. Sinclair detects that something is wrong with the whole Greenwood story and sets out to uncover the truth behind Greenwood's actions. From then on you sense that Ballard has the peices on the board just where he wants them. Truths about the overachieving inhabitants of Eden-Olympia are uncovered piece by piece as Ballard sets about laying down his vision of a possible near future gone wrong. Super Cannes isn't as "in your face" as some of Ballard's other works - this is very much an enjoyable slow burn. There are Ballard's usual themes of casual sex and mob violence - but they are carried out in the comfortingly civilised context of Super-Cannes and therein lies the point. This is a most enjoyable read that will please fans of Ballard's other works. There is a plenty to think about here and this cautionary tale deserves a wide reading.

You'll hate this book, and that's why you should read it........2006-06-15

I felt like writing a review because it's been probably 2 years since I read this book and I still think about it from time to time (and somehow keep reccommending it to my friends). Aside from its dystopic classification, this book is a study in dichotomy. The depravity of some of the characters in a pristine community. How disconnected it seems from real life and any semblance of morality. How sometimes the crisp, white pages of my book seemed to be covered with a greasy film. I originally read this book because I was looking for something different, something that didn't have a happy ending. I got what I asked for--I had to put it down several times because it made me uncomfortable to read. But I always picked it up again, I couldn't stop. I hated the characters, but I had to see what happened to them. Ballards writing is uncensored, unemotional and sterile, but full of beauty at the same time. The way his prose seems so disconnected (purposefully, I might add) from the events of the plot, the way he mixes the clean and sharp with the oily and jagged nature of things is unsettling but somehow you keep turning the pages.

The novel is not very long and I finished it quickly, I found out what happened to the character's I despised. The ending was not what I expected and left me unsettled. I still don't think I've reconciled what happened in the book, but not because it was badlly written, it is because it was so well written, so complex, and challenged my morality so thoroughly (but I assure you, my morality remains intact).

If you are looking for a feel good story or a light read--stay as far away from j.g. ballard as you can get. But if you are looking for a truly interesting experience, pick up a ballard novel. I'm not sure I'm ready for my next one yet, but I have one working its way to the top of my stack of books to read.

Nasty, implausible and incoherent.......2005-09-04

The reasons for Ballard's popularity elude me, and this ill-spirited dystopian vision (sound familiar?) did nothing to change things. Two dimensional characters overlaid with improbable psychological profiling, in a plot that beggars belief. A view of Southern France that is maddeningly superficial (like the characters and, indeed, the book itself) merely adds insult to injury - people know the areas that are described in the book, so why not get them right? Perhaps the Riviera of the book is supposed to be an "imagined one" in some wacky creative sense, but I suspect the reason for its inept portrayal is authorial laziness, failing to do any research that involves getting deeper into the region than can be done from a Croisette bar (a couple of which, as it happens, being described with loving accuracy in a rare example of plausibility only damaged by the fact that the characters in question would never actually drink in such places). After all, similar authorial laziness can be found in the characters, dialogue, plotting, descriptions...

Once I put it down I could not pick it up again.

SUPER-CANNES.......2005-03-22

Like a million other works, this book explores the depravity that exists under the surface of society's squeaky clean exterior. The hardcover edition cover art includes a picture of your typical office hallway. An artificially lit tunnel lacking any texture save for an air duct and a dark strip used to hide cables - the necessary, but aesthetically unpleasant utilities kept far from view in pristine office buildings. So yeah, the metaphors start coming at you before you even open the book.
I was into the story until about p.300, then I realized the story wasnt going anywhere unexpected and I basically auto-piloted my way through the final 80-odd pages. Well-written but, come on, this kind of stuff is getting cliche. If you really try you can figure out the ending after the first thirty pages. I love JG Ballard's short stories, but for my taste, his novels tend to leave me unfulfilled.

..........2003-09-26

Although it has some lovely queasy undertones and a very workable premise, I found myself a intermittently bored with Super-Cannes after the 50 page mark. This is the first book by JG Ballard that I've read, and it pleased me enough to want to seek out others, but I think his choices for certain plot developments, rather reductive characterizations, and of often laughably pulpy dialogue* were poorly made, and if it wern't for his reputation, slightly greater literacy and the interesting plot, I would just have soon read some supermarket "thriller", like another (terrible) Dan Brown book.

*i.e. "...an affable and fleshy Franco-Lebanese, he stood behind his desk, camel hair coat over his shoulders, more public relations man than security chief. Crime might be absent from Eden-Olympia, but other pleasures were closer to hand."

Concrete Island: A Novel
Average customer rating:

I am the island

More a Writing Exercise Than a Story

A spectacular disappointment

amazing allegory

Ballard is a genius

Concrete Island: A Novel
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 031242034X

Book Description

On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament in Concrete Island soon turns into horror as Maitland-a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe-realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.

Customer Reviews:

I am the island.......2006-07-22

This modern 'Robinson Crusoe' tale tells the story of an architect trapped in a concrete traffic island after a car crash. Man's selfishness is exposed by the fact that nobody stops for him.
He meets his 'Friday's in the form of two outcasts surviving in a shelter on the island, 'their last hiding place, appropriately in the centre of this alienating city.'

Like the main character in Kobo Abe's 'The Woman in the Dunes', the architect tries to escape. But, when eventually he is free, he considers his escape as 'meaningless. Already he felt no real need to leave the island.'

J.G. Ballard has written a forceful portrait of man's solitude in a concrete city, illustrating violently Robert Frost's profoundly human sentence 'Every Man is an island'.

Not to be missed.

More a Writing Exercise Than a Story.......2005-07-15

This is a modernized update on the Robinson Crusoe story, which accomplishes next to nothing in theme or plot development. Ballard has used the premise as an exercise in man-against-nature and man-against-self conflict construction. Here, a man named Maitland, in busy London, has crashed his car into a traffic island that is cut off from the rest off the world by freeway ramps. He finds himself in an unknown place that he can't escape, a la Crusoe. The fact that he is actually just a few feet away from the bustling city and its millions of people, though is isolated in an invisible small space, gives the reader an interesting sense of irony that lasts for about a minute. But otherwise, the book mostly becomes tiresome character developments as Maitland fights through exhaustion and evaluates how he really feels about being isolated. Another problem is the two supporting characters, homeless denizens Jane and Proctor, who are poorly constructed to the point of incomprehensibility, and whose psychoses are merely literary vehicles for Ballard to clumsily shed light on Maitland's foibles. It seems that Ballard merely decided to take some stock settings and themes, and perform a quaint exercise in building a sense of urban isolation through predictable inner conflicts within poorly drawn characters. Others may be amazed by this book's supposed "surreal" or "allegorical" qualities. Fair enough, but that doesn't mean it has a storyline that goes anywhere interesting. [~doomsdayer520~]

A spectacular disappointment.......2004-08-31

Mr. Ballard's novel CONCRETE ISLAND starts out somewhat promising, with a successful English salaryman unintentionally finding himself trapped beneath a freeway overpass. What could have been an interesting study on modern alienation becomes a bizarre parody of Steinbeck's OF MICE AND MEN, with the George Milton character supplanted by a teenage runaway. An incredibly frustrating novel that sucks you in with promises of something better but never delivers.

amazing allegory.......2004-06-11

This book, like a lot of J.G. Ballard's work, cannot be enjoyed by everyone. It lacks the shock value of "Crash" and the intrigue of "The Atrocity Exhibition". I found it, however, to be an enjoyable read in the event that I was prepared to sit down and read this deep piece of litereature. This novel is one big allegory so when you read it you have to keep in mind that it isn't a narrative novel meant for entertainment purposes; it is intended to make a statement, as with most if not all of Ballard's work. I gave it 4 stars based on its allegorical content and how well-written it is rather than how much I enjoyed the book. Ballard fans will certainly enjoy it, but if you are looking for a fluffy, light entertaining read, this is not the book for you.

Ballard is a genius.......2004-01-23

My first Ballard novel. I'm hooked. Brilliant reading. For young and old alike. "Ballard's novels are complex, obsessive, frequently poetic, and always disquieting chronicles of nature rebelling against humans, of the survival of barbarism in a world of mechanical efficiency, of ethropy, anomie, breakdown, ruin . . . The blasted landscapes that his characters inhabit are both external settings and states of mind."-Luc Sante -Fantastic!
I could not have said it better myself.

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The History of the Future
End of "The Dream"
Memories of the Sun
Spacey, surreal, dreamy

Memories of the Space Age
J. G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Arkham House Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

The History of the Future.......2004-08-13

In 1968, the day after the Apollo moon landing, PanAm, one of the USA's biggest airlines at the time, began accepting reservations for flights to the moon. NASA, some time later, announced plans for a permanent moon base by the 1980s. It is difficult for someone who was not much more than a twinkle in someone's eye at the time, to imagine the mood of optimism that surrounded the landings and the extent to which it entered the psyche and fired the imagination.

Ballard's collection of short stories presented in "Memories of the Space Age" were written between 1962 and 1985, spanning the moon landings and shuttle flight and are largely a reaction to that optimistic mood. The reader is placed in a recogniseable future and shown back over the desolate terrain of the space race. The grand and rotting folly of the Cape Canaveral launching towers populate many of the stories yet it is often seen from a distance - from the long-shadowed, evening enclosures of equally rotting tourist hotels. Hotels that might once have served as layovers for space tourists.

Ballard's memories are the future memories of 1960s consumerism which manifested in aerodynamically designed fridges and toasters. He is fascinated with the way science shapes itself in the popular mind. We are like the cargo cult in the story "A Question of Re-Entry" who stumble across a re-entry capsule. We are the cargo cult of tourism, the consumption of destination, the consumption of science. Ballard questions these apropriations of science in the service of tourism/consumerism but it is with a dream logic that is no logic at all.
'Where are we going and what for?'
We are like the character Melville from "My Dream of Flying to Wake Island". He dreams of the journey and the pull is strong, but he doesn't know why or even exactly where it is. He shuns offers of journeys to other exotic locales as he works at freeing his aircraft (creating the means) to go there. In the end we leave him as he watches the wind cover his aircraft once again with sand.

The antidote to this is Scranton, the ex-astronaut in "The Man Who Walked on the Moon", the penultimate story. When asked what it was like to *be* on the moon he replies that it was "just like being here." In what way does time and space really shape our existence?

Ballard is in fine form, his seemingly languid prose delivers compact descriptions and dream-like action to form an open narrative that requires and rewards interrogation. Likewise, the accompanying illustrations by Jefferey Potter are complex and multi-layered. The images both set a scene and challenge it by their surreal detail and juxtaposition of such incongruous elements as the space shuttle with a Sopwith Camel.

I have offered one of many possible readings of this book which is truly dense with meaning. I mentioned that the space age optimism that Ballard comments on is distant history to my generation, however, we do live in an age when a similar optimism pervades the use of information and communication technologies and it is in this light that Ballard makes sense to me. In fact, in many ways, there is a direct lineage from Ballard's musings on the 'space age' and more recent cyberpunk authors' musings on the 'information age'. Perhaps we need to take stock in apropriations of our new 'space age' - communications technology - when we are faced with the future memory of an internet fridge. Is this just aerodynamic styling for the 21st century?

End of "The Dream".......2003-06-04

I read the book several years ago in its Arkham House first ed. It floored me and has stayed with me ever since. These stories are amazing work. The idea, from one of the Canaveral stories, of people taking pieces of dead astronauts and making them into objects of religious veneration was astounding, and seemingly incredible until pieces of Columbia began to show up on eBay. This is simply one of the finest collections of sociological SF ever written--period. Ballard is proactive and prophetic here; I've read this collection again and again, and it's probably most haunting for those of us born during the Camelot era. We watched as Apollo 11 touched down and then we dreamed of space tourism to the moon and Mars bases by 2000. Now, as The Dream (with a capital D) of space travel limps along like a blind, poor beggar attacked by feral dogs, I keep returning to Ballard's collection. Read it, as my students will do this year, and weep for a lost dream.

Memories of the Sun.......1999-11-25

I could hardly agree more with the previous review, except to give this fine book five stars. Ballard's stories are not so much literary inventions as they are dreams of worlds that exist in some yet undiscovered realm, which Ballard has been generous enough to describe for us. His bright, at times incandescent, use of metaphor and surreal imagery contrasts wonderfully with a cool, detached and beautifully fluid prose style. Readers of these stories may not appreciate what they find, but they WILL recognize that they have been someplace very different.

Spacey, surreal, dreamy.......1999-08-01

Ballard repeats, develops, and resolves his ideas about the psychological impact of space-travel and the temptation of breaking out of the constraints of Time. It's almost like watching someone hone a chess game, moving similar characters around in a similar fashion, but the small changes make all the difference...The reader is consoled for the narrative similarities by some of Ballard's most vivid imagery--sun-bleached aviators and the Cubist beauty of a world released from the fourth dimension. Two stories break away from this somewhat; one is a journey into the Amazon jungle in search of a downed spacecraft that gives a nod to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In addition, the last story in the anthology, unusually down to earth (for Ballard) and set in an unnamed tropical/South American location, seems almost like a collaboration between Ballard and--possibly--Ray Bradbury. A worthwhile read for a Ballard fan, a touch challenging for other readers.

Average customer rating:

The Ideal Atrocity Exhibition
Unconvincing novel about interesting ideas
Ballard's most evocative for years

Kingdom Come (SIGNED)
J.G. Ballard
Manufacturer: Fourth Estate
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0007232462

Customer Reviews:

The Ideal Atrocity Exhibition.......2007-05-24

J.G Ballard's new novel Kingdom Come is set in an ultra-modern shopping centre where the consumerist dream of ideal homes and endless sporting events has reached their inevitable apotheosis as a new form of fascism. The shopping centre in question is the fictional Metro-Centre located off the M25, but Kingdom Come could so easily read as an admonitory tale implying a retail dystopia which is very real and somewhat closer to home.
J.G Ballard is the writer of Crash and Empire of the Sun, both of which have been filmed by the `Bergs' (that's Speil and Cronen) and has been described as the `Seer of Sheperton', an `autobahn prophet' and our `greatest living author'. In his 1968 novel The Atrocity Exhibition he predicted that Ronald Reagan would become president of America a good thirteen years before said governor of California achieved assassination status. Certainly no other writer seems to have his finger as firmly on the pulse of the 20/21st century's psycho-sociological state of play.

But with Kingdom Come Ballard appears to be writing the same book as if caught in a time glitch from one of his short stories of the 1950's. His last four novels have all been set within high-concept living environments where the attainment of a perfect life loses out to an inherent will to violence. In the fourth of what I'd call the `modern life is rubbish' "quadrilogy" (Thank you 20th Century Fox) Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes, Millennium People and now Kingdom Come all begin with a seemingly meaningless murder in a perfect enclosed society with an outsider arriving to solve the mystery which turns out to be no real mystery at all because it's always a barely concealed conspiracy involving all the residents; and it's not Ballard's first exploration of ideal living environments which, in `Ballard world', inevitably degenerate into chaos; High Rise was written during his `golden period' in the early 70's, as a reaction to the explosion of tower blocks which threatened to be the de rigor living experience of the future.

This said, even when Ballard doesn't appear to be trying he still urinates from a great height on the likes of your Iain Banks' and Alex Garland's. Which I suppose goes some way to illustrating that the great are only great when they have to be. But Kingdom Come is recommended reading for residents of `designer towns' like Milton Keynes (U.K) and Celebration (U.S) who yearn for meaning in increasingly meaningless times.

Adrian Stranik

Unconvincing novel about interesting ideas.......2007-03-11

When ad exec Richard Pearson's father is shot dead by a seemingly deranged man in a shopping centre in Brooklands - a motorway town on the outskirts of London - Richard comes to town to settle his father's affairs. But with the killer released without charge, and apparently under the protection of powerful locals, Richard soon suspects there is more to his father's death than anyone is telling him. He decides to dig deeper. Casting its shadow across his investigation is the Metro-Centre - a 24x7 consumerist heaven, which seems darkly linked to a spate of racist attacks and flag-waving hooliganism. Fascism is afoot and consumerism, it seems, is to blame... Ballard fans like me will recognise the plot and preoccupations from recent novels such as "Cocaine Nights", "Super Cannes" and "Millennium People". This kind of thing is Ballard's bread and butter these days. There's plenty going on here at an intellectual level, but it never comes together as a novel: the plot is forced and clunky; the characters contradictory and weak; the situations faintly ludicrous. The wonderful premise simply never takes flight. Ballard wants us to accept that consumerism, with its constant imperative for "the new" whatever the cost, leads inevitably to fascism. Cool. A nice idea. But where's the evidence? Where's the narrative journey that shows how it happens? The novel shouldn't just state and restate the connection, but instantiate it, take us inside that lifestyle and show us how it happens at the level of the individual. But "Kingdom Come" doesn't do this. Consumerism is only ever rendered at the level of a social force. It never loses its status as an abstraction, an "ism". It never becomes convincing as an individual affliction because we never see it from the inside; we never get access to the interior world of someone suffering from this disease. So when characters behave at the behest of this "force", it doesn't convince. Indeed, it all becomes rather ridiculous. What we get is Richard's cynical, pompous narration of townsfolk suddenly transmogrifying into gun-toting stormtroopers and building altars out of electrical appliances. When other characters do speak, it's often in such familiar tones that you suspect Ballard is simply ventriloquizing what he'd much rather be expressing in an Op-Ed piece. Not that these are uninteresting conversations - they're just unconvincing as conversations. This lack of instantiation - the lack of a plot and characters that bear the argument out - proves fatal. Of course, any writer is perfectly entitled to jettison the traditional novelistic aesthetic, but he or she needs to replace it with something else - as Ballard himself did so beautifully in "The Atrocity Exhibition". Here, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd much rather be reading an essay by Ballard on the same subject, rather than an essay masquerading as novel. I love Ballard, but this is one of his least impressive works.

Ballard's most evocative for years.......2006-09-05

Kingdom Come
By J.G. Ballard
4th Estate/Harper Collins

In his astonishing new novel J.G. Ballard has discovered the apocalypse in the form of washing machines, stereo units and every other form of what his characters have dubbed, with both political and religious fervour, Consumerism.

Ballard's novels have often touched a nerve, from his erotic-schizoid Crash to his semi-autobiographical The Empire of the Sun. Much of his earlier work was decidedly fantastical and often generically dubbed science fiction. But in his recent novels Ballard has been investigating the present. Often dubbed a Futurist, his conclusions are unnerving indeed.

In some ways Kingdom Come is a return to form for Ballard. His three previous novels - Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes, Millennium People - seemed somewhat anchored by his attempts to grapple the strangeness of contemporary suburban life. But in Kingdom Come Ballard is both terrifyingly insightful and at his most phantasmagorical best.

Kingdom Come in its 280 pages seems to achieve a strangely heroic, epic scale. In essence it is the story of a rather ineffectual, unemployed advertising executive, Richard Pearson. But when Pearson's father is murdered in a labyrinthine shopping mall in suburban Brooklands near the Heathrow Airport he sets out to investigate why the initially accused shooter has been set free. Thus begins a surreal journey into the heartlands of English suburbia, thuggish sports riots, racism, terrorism, hostage-taking, contemporary politics, consumer greed, religious extremism, family relations and far more.

Where Kingdom Come succeeds is in its fine high-wire act of balancing pure farce, surreal imagery and real world events. One suspects that Ballard, who lives in suburban Shepparton outside of London, may have personally witnessed some of the racist attacks that have become commonplace during soccer riots; he depicts the senseless vandalism and violence with solemn clarity.

He is equally acute in describing the culturally void environs in which such violence occurs. His satellite suburbs are essentially devoid of, libraries, art galleries or traditional places of worship. His Brookland is dominated by a central grand edifice, a vast shopping mall dubbed the Metro-Centre, the site of what he comes to believe is his father's deliberate assassination.

Brooklands has become dominated by the semi-martial football gangs. The populace wear clothing adorned with the cross of Saint George, without which one is invariably a target of the hooligans.

Ballard's tale builds powerfully as Pearson's paranoia grows apace, leading to a hostage situation replete with a virulent form of Stockholm Syndrome. On the wild ride we encounter many of Ballard's favourite tropes and his increasing tendency towards self-referentiality. Pearson's father was an airline pilot, leading to riffs reflecting Ballard's fascination with flight - "a reverie of wings that overflew deserts and tropical estuaries" - references to his earlier books, The Drought and The Day of Creation respectively. The near-by racetrack features a monument to the 1930s; "the heroic age of speed, the era of the Schnieder Trophy seaplane race and record-breaking flights."

Ballard's nostalgia for the '30s and the notion of flight and freedom are personal touchstones for the author. He was born in 1930 in Shanghai and shortly afterwards his family were interred in a civilian prison camp. Like the author himself, it doesn't take long for Pearson to be similarly entrapped, as much psychologically as physically, when he visits the Metro-Centre.

The mall has become the town centre. "No one attends church. Why bother?" a character muses early in the piece. "They find spiritual fulfillment at the New Age centre, first left after the burger bar."

Pearson's initial attempts to leave Brooklands and return to London are thwarted early on as all roads seem to lead back to the Metro-Centre and its immediate environs. Initially panicked, Pearson soon concludes that the Centre "smothered unease, defused its own threat and offered balm to the weary."

But the muzak played in the mall has a distinctly martial edge to it, which is more stringently replicated when the football hooligans begin marching in step and wearing uniforms emblazoned with the cross of St. George.

As always Ballard rewrites the rules. Rather than Modernism being followed by Postmodernism, in Kingdom Come Modernism is followed by Consumerism which at its extreme is compared to Nazi Germany and fundamentalist Islam and Christianity. All, his central character posits, are "states of willed madness."

As a new regime emerges from the chaos of football violence we are led through a thinly veiled analysis of disinformation that is easily read as a metaphor for Tony Blair's government.

The new regime take over the Metro-Centre, holding the mass of consumers hostage, many of them joining the insane campaign to establish a new Consumerism. The Centre becomes a tropical sauna, an enclosed environment where cargo-cult style shrines appear in the mist. This is Ballard's most evocative writing for many years, a descent into madness that sees the ultimate shopping mall meet Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

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