Product Description
Science-Fiction ... Read more

Product Description
From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Cocaine Nights comes an acclaimed backlist title -- the unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control -- now reissued in new cover style.Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for technological mayhem!In this classic visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

another element
One element of this wonderful, chilling novel the reviewers here miss is just how funny it is.

There are better out there.
This book covers territory which is better-charted than its author and his audience (who seem to agree that he's some sort of pioneer) would suspect; the question of how people behave in the breakdown of social order is not a new one in this of all centuries. Ballard's premise, the isolation of the building and its shift into unexpected but psychologically natural warfare, had me expecting _Watership Down_, and the passage with the gulls suggests that Ballard might have been expecting the same, but that isn't exactly what we got.

This is a fever dream of a rootless humanity with no loyalties, no strong emotions, and no understanding of or desire for either; it rings false. The author does not know what people really act like under these kinds of pressures (though a study of the literature of the two World Wars, fiction as well as memoirs and history, would certainly have told him); but he does know, and laboriously depicts, the set of behaviors that modern literary critics would tell him would occur. It is true enough, as the narrator openly states, that the model for these characters' behaviors is postmodern man, not primitive man; but the defining trait of the postmodern is insulation from difficult physical realities -- hunger, death, pain, war, disease -- and postmodernity tends not to last when this insulation has disappeared.

The author's eye is inaccurate in general; one small but telling detail is the mention of a shotgun halfway through the book, and the comment that the inhabitants of the high-rise had a tacit agreement that they would settle their conflicts "by physical means alone." This sort of understanding (an implausibility which this book shares with _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, in both cases probably due to their authors' aesthetic preference for melee weapons) would last only until someone decided that victory was more important than tacit agreements -- in other words, until someone had been truly and deeply insulted, or found that someone or something that he really valued had been put in danger. Bursts of this sort of real violence happen even in our own more stable society; in a context like this, busily unravelling into a Nietzchean fairyland, they would be all but constant. (Nor does this mention the utter failure of everyone present to involve the police, and indeed the failure of the police, the military, the building inspectors, the insurance companies, and so on to take any interest whatsoever in the high-rise, if nothing else for their own financial self-interest. I'm familiar with what Barzun calls "the loss of nerve characteristic of periods of decadence," but this takes the cake; if Wilder had actually burned down the building as Laing had imagined, think of the life-insurance payouts alone...)

This sort of spurious depiction is probably most painful because much better works have covered this subject, or elements of it. Perhaps the closest analogy to High-Rise is G.K. Chesterton's _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ (now out of copyright, and readily available on-line). Bill Mauldin's _Up Front_ is one of many memoirs of the World Wars -- and the trench warfare of the Italian campaign of 1943-5 saw physical conditions similar to this book's, but with quite different consequences. Post-apocalyptic fiction is a thriving, if often irresponsible, genre; for psychological truths relevant to this book's subject matter, I would recommend Aldous Huxley's _Ape and Essence_ and Walter Miller's _A Canticle for Leibowitz_. And, of course, for a work dealing with the same themes, but with conclusions as different as its physical trappings, I'd recommend Richard Adams' _Watership Down_.

Disappointing
I spent years waiting for this novel. And then I finally got it from my wife for my birthday. I have to say that I was quite disappointed.

First, the conflict in the story is presented in such a fashion that it is hard to be anything but detached from it. While I am aware that I am from Generation Why and am divorced from the concept of caring about fictional or real characters and their trials and tribulations, the fact of the matter is that it was remarkably difficult to really care about ANYTHING that happened in this book, including the gang rape of the inhabitants of the tower.

What should have been an interesting study in the strife and malfunction of human relationships, the stranding of a thousand people on a desert island in the middle of a society that they are functionally free to escape to at any time, was underdeveloped and overprocessed. The result was that a wonderful story premise was destroyed. We know why three or four of the characters stayed in the tower. What about the rest? We only know anything about three of the characters in the entire story, and their motivations seem...lacking for the determination to survive and thrive in this environment that they are presented in.

If you want a dystopian epic about what can go wrong in a building like this, go pick up Neal Stephenson's The Big U. It is far more credible and far more entertaining. Much better overall.

The two good things about this: The first paragraph and the last page. The nihilism and the destruction wrought by the people in the first tower makes reading the book tolerable. And the first paragraph is the single most interesting beginning of a story that I have ever read. These two things are why it is getting a star above minimum.

Go read something better. This is overrated.

Harkius

One of Ballard's best
I'd only add that, like all of Ballard's work, it's also very funny.
Those of you who think this novel is unbelievable or preposterous have never lived in a large apartment complex.

Freakish, Obsessive . . .
I've read this book twice now, and I wouldn't say it's my favourite Ballard book so far, which isn't to say it doesn't have its good points. Freakish, creepy and obsessive, the story tracks the disintegration of a newly-built highrise from the pinnacle of modern convenience to a twisted and perverse enclosed world of primitive survival.

I found a lot of repetition in the narrative, which got a little annoying at times. Typical themes found so frequently through Ballard's work are here - internal psychology in relation to external environment, voyeurism and perversion of the affluent, and so on. Some parts even made me feel quite squeamish, and I wouldn't say this would be one for the fainthearted.

Certainly worth the read for Ballard fans and fans of literature in a similar vein, I don't think this would be my first choice to new readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Riders of the Sun
This collection of stories from Ballard's early years displays him in full command of his considerable literary gifts.Ballard excels in the short form and this book contains some of his very best; most notably, TheDrowned Giant and The Garden of Time.His vivid, visual and originalimagination are coupled with a jade cool narrative style, resulting in auniquely strange body of work. Chronopolis and Other Stories contains noneof the excesses for which Ballard has been damned and praised, just sixteenfine short stories; two or three of which are among the best you'll everread.

Some excellent stories
Chronopolis and other stories features some of Ballard's best stories (Man hole 69, Billenium, and my personal favorite, the garden of time).Some of the stories aren't that great.But Ballard is agood short story writer.And I certainly wouldpick these stories up than read tripe like Crash ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Conrad meets Dante
***SPOILERS***

J.G. Ballard's second novel, THE DROWNED WORLD (1962), follows a small group of scientific researchers and army personnel.Their job is to explore and catalogue the flora and fauna which have changed significantly, following a natural catastrophe which has heated the earth.

Most of humanity (which doesn't figure in the story directly) is now located on or near the poles, which are the best areas for human habitation; there is less radiation, and the ice-caps melted long ago, raising the global water level, submerging many major cities.

The novel begins and ends with biologist Dr Robert Kerans, who is studying a series of lagoons which formed, as we are later to learn, over London, England.Kerans feels that the environment is reverting back to Triassic Period conditions; the blazing heat, and the increased size of the plants, animals, and insects are indicators of this phenomenon.

But the main reason for reading this short novel, in my opinion, is for Ballard's flair for description.The jungle, and the moody atmosphere created by its description, is reminiscent of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS.

I think there is also a nod to a figure from Dante's THE DIVINE COMEDY:Beatrice.In both works, Beatrice leads the hero through an unsavoury locale (to say the least!) towards some kind of deliverance.If my surmise is correct, then it adds meaning to Beatrice's wanting to stay in the lagoon, once the party has decided that it is no longer habitable.It also paints Kerans' exit in a more positive light, and explains why all of the villains are attempting to hang onto the trappings of civilization.In essence then, this is a science fiction ode to nature and our natural instincts: an updating of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the State of Nature as a normative guide.

I enjoyed the tone of the first half of the book more than the second.I found the swamp much more menacing and mysterious than the human agencies, which are introduced in the latter portion.I wished it would have kept describing and developing Kerans' psychological descent instead.

Voyage to the jungle of human mind
It is the year of 1962. Golden age of pulp-fiction SF magazines is coming to an end. Television is kicking in, and movies are slowly but steadily coming to the throne where they will remain for 50 upcoming years. Meanwhile, in the dark slums of literature, new wave is rising, and new authors of Science fiction (which will later acquire new name of Speculative fiction) are emerging - forever changing genre itself, and world outside. One of those authors, James Graham Ballard, British born and raised, envisaged something that will in 21st century become one of the most present topics in world wide media - global warming. Though, concepts are slightly different now and then. Whilst scientists of today are arguing about influence of industry and civilization on melting of polar caps, Ballard vision goes with a natural flow of events. Somewhat outstretched and fantastic (we are still in the genre of fantasy fiction), but still unavoidable catastrophe in which Sun plays an important role. Not to concern you with details (even Ballard is rather sketchy here) it suffices to say that Earth of "The drowned world" is slowly progressing backwards towards an older geological era - with rainforests and swamps emerging everywhere, with equatorial climate stretching as far as Far North and South, with animal and plant lifeforms becoming a single mass of adaptable organisms built to live in these conditions and humans caught somewhere in between. Technology has been defeated, fuel is running scarce, and few million people which have survived aggressive sunlight have hidden somewhere far outside of reach. Those who run about this drowned world are few members of military, few scientists and few pirates, salvaging what they can, preparing for an imminent end. Somewhere along this line, the movie of catastrophe is bound to come up. Roland Emmerich did few of them with similar premises and all flopped miraculously. But, Ballard doesn't want to tell us this tale - tale of destruction and imminent end, tale of desperation and complete annihilation of life as we know it. In a time before the New wave, we could have expected the villain responsible for these events, hero as well who could defeat the menacing threat and eventually restore life on Earth whilst upholding the American dream. Instead, we received a psychological novel that concerns itself with psyche, and its transgression - it's evolution (or is it de-evolution?), novel that lacks the plot in the conventional sense, with many dreamlike passages which look like they have been written on acid and with a straightforward disbelief for project of moderne and proud notion that humanity can survive and overcome whichever obstacle emerges in front of it. This is one of those novels where science part of SF becomes speculation, where how and why isn't the most important question that needs to be answered. 'What if?' and 'imagine' returned with a tremor to a corps of SF, and answer to the questions posed aren't so blue-eyed as you might believe. And it is not a depressing, dark tale of extinction. It is as marvelous as it gets, with sane reasoning and plausible characters, with world that resembles our own yet it is not Ours in any sense. It is the high-point of literature and paradigm of genre that will come in following years.

So, we readers of today, what can we find inside of these pages? Is there something that we haven't seen or heard in countless incarnations of human imagination? We'll every book provides an unique experience to it's reader and this one isn't different. Even fifty years upon it's first publishing it still holds a power to grasp it's reader, to lure him into this nightmarish world on the verge of catastrophe. It has to power to speak volumes with few sentences, to relive once again our life under different conditions, it poses questions of sanity and humanity, of identity that is defined through collective memory (think of the memes in modern discourse) and subconscious imprints, it tells a tale of survival and struggle in hostile environment (once again, this can be read as a simple jungle or something entirely different but much more familiar) and leads us through corridors of self always asking, always pondering. This is what good literature should do - it should shatter our world, change our perspective, give a kick to this sleepy head of ours like a violent wake-up call and leave us dazzled and confused. Sure, there has been better writers than J.G.Ballard who had done something similar, his sentence is sometimes troubled and burdened with unnecessary bits of this and that, but in the end, that what remains, is a great narrative that has epistemological and artistic value even today. To those of you who are accustomed to an action oriented SF, where every single page is filled with meaningful events and ominous threats, this book may be somewhat drab and boring, more blank than anything else. But, to those of you who still like to converse with the book itself, to pose questions and seek answers this will be fulfillment of your needs. Today, we lack this kind of prose (in genre particularly) so we must seek elsewhere - once again, past has provided us with an compelling answer.

fantastic
Spectacular, if different from his later work, this book is more suggestive of a less-frenetic style of plot-driven sci-fi, whereas later Ballard further explores the body-as-landscape motifs of the postmodern era. This is a novel of idea, and wonderfully constructed.

God Awful
This was like self flagellation to read this
through but I was trapped somewhere with nothing
else.At first I found it's global warming idea
kind of interesting but it quickly becomes a grade
D horror movie script...I suppose it was successful
in that I still feel revulsion for it a year later.

The Drowned World
Ballard's first novel is a prefigurement of the dark themes that color much of his subsequent work: cataclysm, entropy, devolution, obsession...redemption. An atmosphere of tension and menace haunts his stories which are set in landscapes that Ballard details with an almost febrile intensity. Moreover there are few happy endings in his fiction. And yet it works. Ballard's great imagination; his vivid, erudite prose; his seemingly limitless vocabulary and a willingness to take risks have resulted in a unique body of work which reveals an artist not just for our times, but perhaps for all times.

In The Drowned World Ballard describes an inundated earth. Temperatures have risen, melting the ice caps,and the planet gradually reverts to a paleontologic state. Above the once great cities of the world the tops of skyscrapers rise like islands, serving as neo-mesozoic eyries for plant and animal. Ballard peoples a sunken London with various deserters from the human cause. Living in abandoned penthouses they struggle to come to terms with this new world, and their own inner changes.

If Ballard's short stories are like "condensed novels", The Drowned World is like an elongated short story. The pace is leisurely and the book fades out rather than ends. Still, it is an invigorating read and a great first effort for an exciting and original talent. ... Read more

Product Description
J G Ballard's extraordinary inventiveness and the unfailing grace and energy of his writing are triumphantly displayed in this collection of stories. The collection includes 'The Overloaded Man', 'Chronopolis' and the critically acclaimed 'The Garden of Time'. These haunting tales of pity, terror and longing, tightly plotted and firmly grounded in psychological realism, transcend classification as fantasy or science fiction; they are literature of the highest order. 'One of the few world-class British writers alive today' Literary Review ... Read more

Product Description
A highly sought cultural commentator, J. G. Ballard has provided thoughtful remarks on the state of the world for decades. J.G. Ballard Conversations brings together several of Ballard's latest interviews and gives readers penetrating insight into the mind of one of the freshest thinkers at work today. Covering topics such at the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the evolution of sexual relationships, and our strange, immersive celebrity culture, this book is a fount of provocative takes on the things that matter. Rounded out with rare photographs of Ballard and supplemental resources, J.G. Ballard Conversations is a necessary item for anyone interested in the modern world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Another 'must have' book for the Ballard enthusiast.
"Re/Search 8/9: J G Ballard", which dates from 1984, is the single best book that's been published on Ballard. This latest offering from Re/Search brings us right up to date, containing a variety of interviews and discussions with the author taken over the period 1983 to 2004. There's lots here on Ballard's usual themes - psychopathology, death of affect, and so on. But the guts of the book lies in the three lengthy interviews in 2003 and 2004, in the course of which Ballard also visits such contemporary issues as 9-11, neo-cons, globalization, the end of the 'Age of Reason', and terrorism. As a counterpoint, there's a series of more informal, and often amusing, discussions that the Re/Search people have had with Ballard over the years they've been associated with him.

Whilst the interviews don't quite reach the heights of those in "Re/Search 8/9: J. G. Ballard", it's a worthy addition to Re/Search's portfolio of books by or about J.G.B., and a great companion to "J. G. Ballard: Quotes".

sparkling bathers in near-futuristic water-slide playground utopias somehow magically growing out of vast deserts
The work that has earned J.G. Ballard his reputation as a prophet of the present runs the full gamut from the perverse to the catastrophic, from the utterly Surreal to the deeply personal. In J.G. Ballard Conversations, a new collection of interviews from RE/Search, Ballard exercises his trenchant observations live and uncensored. Running jags on the politics of paranoia are illumed with scientific/poetic clarity and a critical sense of the absurd on every page. But to say that Ballard is ahead of his time or a proponent of "science fictions" is misleading. The opposition that at one time may have existed between realistic fiction and "fantasy" or "science fiction" has been dismantled. Society's skewed relationship to realist fiction is explained by Ballard as the failing imaginations of contemporary men and women of letters to ascertain a world quickly leaving their ilk in the perfumed car exhaust.

"I think realist fiction has shot its bolt--it just doesn't describe the world we live in anymore. We're not living in a world where you can make a clear separation (as you could, say during the heyday of the 19th-century realist novel) between the external world of work, commerce, industry and a fixed set of values, and the internal world of hopes, dreams and ambitions. It's the other way around--the external world is a fantasy nowadays. It's a media landscape generated by advertising, and politics conducted as a branch of advertising.
There's an envelope of fantasy that is just pouring out of the air all the time, shaping all of our most ordinary perceptions... Fiction surrounds us--it's more than fiction, it's fantasy of a very peculiar kind that creates our environment. And to describe you've got to get away from realism. Yet the bourgeois novel survives and of course it's immensely popular--which is a bit of a problem."

Ballard's ability to lay open our present like a surgeon with a scalpel never fails, although his often satirical wit more closely resembles a butcher hacking us to pieces on his block. The real gravity in reading Ballard's musings lie in mapping his recurring obsessions, which even in the candor of casual conversation articulate the core themes of his novels. Ballard literally seems pathologically transfixed with the collective pathologies of modern society, how these pathologies manifest themselves and grow through individuals and in culture at large. His often fatalistic perspective on how individuals may or may not be able to cope with this transforming psychological landscape is a major concern throughout much of Ballard's thinking spanning years of acute insight:

On page 60, interviewed in 2003,
'I don't want to make an apocalyptic prophecy--I hardly ever do anything but make apocalyptic prophecies [!]--but I see elective psychopathy as the coming thing."

Or on page 136 discussing the politics of unconscious media manipulation embodied in figures like Ronald Reagan, in an interview from the 1980s,
"He clearly has the possibility within himself for people to impose their fantasies on him. That's the key thing... It's almost as if what one needs is a sort of reverse charisma now. Not a light that shines outwards, but the ability, like a black hole, to draw light inwards."

Or on page 100, from an interview in 2003 speaking of more direct modes of herding the masses:
"Psychopathic behavior seems to appears to immensely increase the possibilities of life--that's how whole nations can embrace, quite voluntarily, psychopathic acts. One could argue that both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia were elective psychopathies on a nationwide scale... There may be profound masochistic strains running through modern industrial man, that every now and then summon forth these demons like Hitler and Stalin who then do what is expected of them. It's a frightening prospect, but I think the Age of Reason is over."

And on page 166, in a 1991 interview with Lynne Fox, on the larger implications of the Surrealist legacy and whether creative insight into these cultural phenomena can serve as a satirical antidote or if it is never more than a harbinger of the end:
"It would be very difficult to make the Dali/Bunuel films made at the end of the 1920s today because the sight of people dragging dead donkeys through a drawing room would [seem to be] some sort of advertising stunt--a beer commercial. The external world is so strange, so full of fantasy, that you can't use the classic Surrealist approach."

The affinity Ballard feels with the Surrealists comes from the need to map a new mythology, one which recognizes the deeper strata of human consciousness skewered out on the pig poles of the everyday. "I'm trying to suggest that there is a new psychological order awaiting us, I'm as convinced of this as an ordinary individual as I am as an imaginative writer..." (167).

Whether discussing the co-optation of Surrealism by product advertisers, the ever-evolving romance of technology and human sexuality, or how the fictions of our day-to-day existence are now more fantastic than the bravest works of literary endeavor, Ballard's ability as a conversationalist and thinker never leaves a moment dull.
RE/Search has done a marvelous job in assembling and maintaining a recorded archive of an extraordinary and sadly-overlooked point of view. The photographs illustrating this collection create a pervasive feeling of some bizarre and quintessentially Ballardian mental landscape. Airbrushed models pouting their desirous and desiring faces juxtaposed upon dirty and transpiring buildings, sparkling bathers in near-futuristic water-slide playground utopias somehow magically growing out of vast deserts, and campy-looking old laboratory portrait photographs where without much suggestion the scientists could easily be mistaken for costumed sadists committing acts of sexual barbarism upon comely supine machines and more-than-willing control consuls. The publishing brilliance of RE/Search shines through in this perceptive coupling of words and images. This is the same sensibility that expertly paired the illustrations of Phoebe Gloeckner with the text of the Atrocity Exhibition to create the definitive and now infamously classic RE/Search edition of that twisted masterpiece. J.G. Ballard Conversations, with little doubt, will garner a similar following amongst those who know and appreciate Ballard's genius.

Converting Conversations.
This excellent volume from the seminal underground SF publisher RE/Search is a definite must for anybody who is a fan of JG Ballard or of intelligent, thought-provoking discourse in general. Transcripts of conversations with various people with Ballard from over a couple of decades veer, often presciently, over subjects as diverse as internet sex, 9/11, the psychology of George W Bush and Tony Blair, the Stockholm syndrome/masochistic victim mentality methodology necessary to keep Western society running, psychopathology, violence, literature, and a thousand other subjects Ballard always has an original opinion on.

I found myself stopping frequently when reading this book to digest the information (overload) I had just ingested, and it certainly gave me food for thought and many interesting topics of conversation with my wife. Subsequent readings after the first reveal different layers of thought and theory after the initial culture shock of reading about things like religions regulating against a sane, peaceful society wears off. Buy this book. You won't regret it. Seriously. It certainly opened my eyes in a brilliant, innovative way to many latent strands and strains of faulty or faultline thought in modern life, and I'm definitely grateful for that.

Check out www.laurahird.com/newreview/jgballardinterview.html for more information on this and J.G. Ballard Quotes.

CONVERSATIONS is a rich collection of Ballardian riffs
J.G. Ballard has spent most of his adult life quietly in a UK suburb.This collection of conversations is like being able to spend a surreal tea time with Ballard himself.Spanning discussions held in the early 1980s up through interviews held in the past few years, CONVERSATIONS is a compendium of Ballardian thought in the raw, composed freestyle like jazz music only between two people speaking.

The 20 year time span allows a good perspective on how political and social patterns predicted by Ballard in his writing during the 60s and 80s have come to pass as cultural reality.A Cronenberg Brundlefly will be quite at home on the wall overhearing these conversations. ... Read more

Product Description
At Port-la-Nouvelle, on the parched terrain of central Africa, Dr. Mallory watches as his clinic fails and dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation and sets out for the river’s source.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Not Free SF Reader
A doctor, sick of the corporate shill he is becoming goes to work in Central Africa.He gets obsessed with finding water, as well as being in the middle of a small military conflict.

When lots of water does happen to come around he starts to get loopier and loopier, hunting for its source, with a young girl he has a demented Lolita thing for, while he does his little Heart of Darkness adventure on a boat.

improbable adventure
This is not so much a story as a fable, or fever-dream.

'Dr. Mallory' arrives in a poverty-ridden African country to run a WHO clinic. Messing about, Mallory improbably exposes a natural spring in the arid landscape, which rapidly becomes a substantial river.
Mallory names the river after himself and sets sail along it in a derelict ferry, the Salammbo, to discover its source, along with characters such as a former guerrilla, a 12-year-old girl he names Noon. Strangely some of the characters resemble real people I have met, myself, in parts of Africa.

One of the most interesting characters is the half-blind Mr Pal, who entertains us with an occasional monologue of the passing scenery:

" . . . wild magnolias and many small tamarinds, with comfortable footing for passerine birds . . . the river is some eight metres in depth, moving through an ample basin of washed granitic marl, well stocked with aquatic life. The warm waters offer friendly refuge to snakes and lizards . . . "
"Mr. Pal . . . " I cut the throttle in protest. "For God's sake - you sound as if you're stocktaking on the last day of creation . . . "
"Well put doctor, that describes it exactly . . . "


Mallory finds that the 'benefits' of the river are becoming cancelled by its dangers, and decides he must destroy it, but he disintegrates into delirium as he tries to reach the source, harrassed by the guerillas, the local 'peace forces' - arguably more 'evil' than the guerillas -and nature itself.

Ballard has long impressed me with his incredibly vivid ability in imagery, evident as long ago as his early work "The Drowned World" (now prophetically coming true as the ice caps melt); but in this book, The Day of Creation, Ballard revels in imagery at the cost of making the story realistic. There were too many spots where this reader simply felt 'thrown out' of the narrative, caused by a failure to suspend disbelief in this outrageous tale, due to the extreme improbability of certain of the events.

An interesting idea that falls flat.
This is one of those books that clearly isn't meant to be taken entirely literally, the kind where all the events have some kind of metaphorical significance and the exterior landscape is an obvious externalization of an interior one.When done well, this can result in extraordinarily rich and rewarding fiction, the sort of story that does profound things to deep parts of your brain and can provide new insights and emotional resonances every time you return to it.Sadly, when it's done, er, less well, what you end up with is a story that fails to work on two levels instead of just one.And while it does have a few points of interest -- enough that I almost talked myself into giving it three stars instead of two -- this novel unfortunately is one of the latter kind.The metaphors and the imagery they're captured in never seem quite rich enough or subtle enough to be really engaging, either emotionally or intellectually, and the plot in and of itself is neither particularly interesting nor especially plausible.It's been quite a while since I've read any of Ballard's other work, but from what I remember he's not exactly untalented at this sort of thing.Even talented writers occasionally fall flat, however.I wanted to like and appreciate this story, I really did.But, in the end, I was counting down the pages until I was finished and could go and read something else instead.I suspect I only finished it because I'm stubborn.My advice: If you've never read anything by Ballard, start somewhere else.And if you like some of his stuff but don't feel a burning desire to read every word he's ever read, you might as well skip this one.

Waste
RIDING HIS PREVIOUS COATAILS INTO OBLIVION ...ONCE HE WAS GOOD, AND THEN HE JUST GOT WORSE AND WORSE .PROiSE IS REALY DEAD. THIS BOOK IS LEADEN .ITS CURSED. I KEPT TRYIND ;..TO READ ON and on, BUT IT WAS EXCRUCIATING IN ITS EMPTINESS, like in the sixtiesHE WAS GOOD, in the seventies, he was almost brilliant, AND THEN THE MIND ROT [ THE ENTROPY.. the callousness the alien here, in the everyday,hOw wasTHE so goodEXAMPLE day of forever SUPERENCLOSEDURE brillianceExclipsed by the MADDENING BAD? ]anything after the very early early eighties] TAKES OVER.. HIS WRITINGS, AND SAD, HE BECOMES WHAT HE PREACHES AGHASTat ;SURELY GHOSTILYMAYBE ITS POST MODERNISM OR SOMETHING this is the most tedious book ive ever had the un pleasure of not finishing,

A delirious psychological odyssey...
Ballard's 1987 novel "The Day of Creation" is a sinuous odyssey through a surrealized Africa drunk on the potential of Western technology. Ballard's narrative voice is rich and engaging, the fluctuating exterior and interior landscape rendered with delirious conviction. "The Day of Creation" reads like a particularly brutal 20th century fable, deftly pointing the cool lens of technology on our secret fascination with the Dark Continent.

"The Day of Creation" has been compared to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." But Ballard's novel is at once deeper and more topical; by infusing his story with a compelling and unlikely romance, Ballard reveals a sensual versatility lesser writers would gladly kill for. Read as an adventure story or as erotic allegory, "The Day of Creation" is a pleasure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Some of Ballard's best stories
Not all the pieces here are good, but "garden of time", "Billenium", and the nightmarish tale of urban sprawl in the future, "Build-up", make this a good introduction to Ballard. His stories are better than his novels, so start here.

Some of Ballard's best stories
Not all the pieces here are good, but "garden of time", "Billenium", and the nightmarish tale of urban sprawl in the future, "Build-up", make this a good introduction to Ballard. His stories are better than his novels, so start here. ... Read more

Product Description
Frank Sinatra, Charles Manson andAmerican presidents play their part in J G Ballard's tribute to the American dream past, present and future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A Juvenile Dystopia
JG Ballard is better known for his 'true' historical fiction (Empire of the Sun) then for his alternate history novels and with good reason.Ballard imagines a world where the US has been destroyed as the result ecological warfare.The Russians had built a damn across the Behring Straits and caused the center of America (the great plains) to turn into a desert.Even the mighty Mississippi River had dried up, while huge sand dunes (like in the Sahara) had covered all of the USA from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast.

Those Americans who could get across the sea to Europe were assimilated back into their countries of origin while a few ended up in ghettos in Dublin and Berlin.The rest of the world had been taken over by the Russians.In the next hundred years a few rescue missions sailed for the Western Hemisphere, but none came back to tell any tales.The current mission, led by an ex-Israeli naval captain and made up of some ex-american descendants, aimed for New York City to find the Statue of Liberty and any other objects that could be brought back.

Having landed in NYC and finding that the city was covered by ten or more feet of sand, they decided to do some exploring or the vicinity.While in New Jersey they ran into some 'real' americans who had survived like bedouins in the harsh climate.OK.Are you getting bored?I was.

Blah, blah blah.They get to Las Vegas.It's run by a maniac who calls himself Charles Manson.He has nuclear missiles.Blah, blah blah.You get the point.
Truly disappointing.Kids though should enjoy it because a lot of things get blown up.

Zeb Kantrowitz

am I the only one who likes this book?
Well, I liked it.I don't think the other reviews were terribly fair.It wasn't Shakespaere or Sartre, but it wasn't awful either.The characters weren't terribly deep, but I can forgive that.And anyone who is judging this based on the plausibility of its premise really hasn't read much sci-fi at all.

I agree with another reviewer that it's a little hard to believe that much of the machinery would still be working after a century of disuse.But that doesn't detract from the story.And it's nothing compared with the suspension of disbelief required for some of the "new" flying machines featured in the story.

Embarrassingly implausible
I regret that I cannot recommend "Hello America." In fact, it got so silly at times that it was embarrassing. J.G. Ballard is a British writer whose perception of America is, to say the least, a little too broad. The book's premise (the whole population of the United States flees to Europe in the 2030s, then the whole continent is turned to desert when the Bering Strait is dammed) and characters (nutcases all) were totally implausible. The attempted humor falls flat because the author is taking his premise so seriously, but the premise falls flat because the characters and their adventures are so ridiculous.

Say Goodbye to Hello
Wonderful premise!Awful execution!It's a tough experience to be 50 pages when one realizes that a book does not live up to expectations....at page 75 realize it shall not get better...at page 100 see that one is so bored there is too much temptation to give up.Listen to that temptation.It is unfathomable how a well-regard novelist wrote such a poor book and that no editor saved or stopped the book before it consumed several hours of my time with no gain to me.

Good idea, poor book
The start of the book is good, besides it is hardly beliefable that things are still working after 100 years in the hardest conditions. The psychology of the characters is not very deep but the ultimate adventure that awaitsfor them made me read further after the first 50 pages. However when Ch.Manson appears in the story everything turns to the bad, worse, worstdirection. The whole adventure becomes "forced" like the authorhad to make an end to the story (time pressure ?). The storyline becomesidiotic and completely boring. Actually it is a book you only read by"accident". I can not imagine that one is actually looking for it(unless she/he is forced to). ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (5)

Dry Humor. Creepy tone. Great book.
J.G. Ballard is a rare find, a dystopian with a very, very dry sense of humor. The future isn't the bestiality of "1984" or the state mandated hedonism of Huxley's vision. Rather it comes from the constant tidal pressure of creeping suburbia puncuated with moments of surreal violence sputtered out of a TV set. Kind of like life. I recommend it highly

Good companion to other collections
Ballard novels have never really impressed me - they seem too unfocused and convoluted.I am a big fan, however, of his short stories - generally well-written, interestingly plotted, and providing just the right amount of alienation, making even a mundane situation seem like an otherworldly experience."The Best Short Stories of..." is a great place to start, with many fiction and sci-fi classics, a great representation of the short story form."War Fever" is a worthy follow-up. I don't know why it took me so long to try these stories, but they are definitely worth it.Here, he doesn't really go out of his way to write in any established genre (sci-fi, horror), but his stories seem to drift that way ever so slightly, as if trying to just tread the edge of such.He uses some interesting variations with form as well, seeing what the reader will accept as a story: a questionnaire?An index?Both are equally valid, and Ballard uses them to great effect.Give this collection a try and see how well the stories hold up to his more classic works.I think you'll find that his output from the mid to late '80s was just as good.

Ballard 101
I'll let the scholarly types explain all the deep insight contained in these stories.All I can say is this is the collection I hand out to people who want to explore Ballard's work. Some great stories in there.

Enthralling!
These are some of the most creative short stories I've read.Ever.A sailor wrecks his chemical-laden ship on a remote Caribbean island, and the island environment reacts surprisingly well.A young assassin escapes an English mental institution and begins targeting astronauts.A man locks himself in his house and locks the rest of the world out...forever.Intelligently written, well-researched, and ever fascinating, these stories represent Ballard at his visionary best.I couldn't put it down!

The prodigal Sun
This remarkable collection demonstrates once again how Ballard is one of literature's best kept secrets. Fourteen intelligent, intense and vividly written short stories challenge our theories of the recent future.It isone of the mysteries of our own time that someone casting as long a shadowas does Ballard, is virtually unknown in his native England, let aloneAmerica. This book, with its visions of dystopia, contains some veryintriguing ideas: A middle east guerrilla has an idea for ending thefighting there, only to discover that the UN has a quitedifferent agenda. World War III is played out against the larger concerns of PresidentReagan's health problems.The index from an unknown and perhaps suppressedautobiography provides tantalizing details to the life and times of one ofthis century's most anonymous titans.Ballard shines brightest in theshort form; these stories are no exception.Enjoy! ... Read more

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This is an up-to-date reader of critical essays on J. G. Ballard by leading international academics, which includes a short biography, timeline and comprehensive guided further reading.J.G. Ballard is one of the most significant British writers of the contemporary period. His award-winning novels are widely studied and read, yet the appeal of Ballard's idiosyncratic, and often controversial, imagination is such that his work also enjoys something of a cult status with the reading public. The hugely successful cinematic adaptations of "Empire of the Sun" (Spielberg, 1987) and "Crash" (Cronenberg, 1996) further confirm Ballard's unique place within the literary, cultural and popular imaginations.This guide includes new critical perspectives on Ballard's major novels as well as his short stories and journalistic writing covering issues of form, narrative and experimentation.Whilst offering fresh readings of dominant and recurring themes in Ballard's writing, including history, sexuality, violence, consumer capitalism, and urban space, the contributors also explore Ballard's contribution to major contemporary debates including those surrounding post 9/11 politics, terrorism, neo-imperialism, science, morality and ethics."Guides in the Contemporary Critical Perspectives" series provide companions to reading and studying major contemporary authors. Each guide includes new critical essays combining textual readings, cultural analysis and discussion of key critical and theoretical issues in a clear, accessible style. They also include a preface by a major contemporary writer, a new interview with the author, discussion of film and TV adaptation and guidance on further reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A "must-have" for college libraries
J. G. Ballard: Contemporary Critical Perspectives is an anthology of scholarly essays by learned authors discussing the works of contemporary British author J. G. Ballard, perhaps best knwon for "Empire of the Sun" and "Crash" (both of which received successful cinematic adaptations). Critical perspectives of Ballard's novels, short stories, and journalistic writing discuss his form, narrative style, and experimental ideas. The many themes prevalent in his work range from shocking violence to driving economic forces and turning wheels of history. Ballard's writing offers its own contributions to today's latest debates, particularly those involving politics and terrorism in a post-9/11 world. An invaluable resource especially for college students and literary scholars seeking to analyze and better understand Ballard's writing, J. G. Ballard: Contemporary Critical Perspectives is a "must-have" for college libraries. ... Read more