Product Description
For the first time in one volume, a complete collection of the acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes -- regarded by many as Britain's No 1 living fiction writer.With sixteen novels over four decades -- from The Drowned World in 1962 to his highly acclaimed Super-Cannes in 2000 -- J.G. Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain's most celebrated and original novelists.For all that time he has also written short stories; in fact, many people consider that he is at his best in the short-story format. These highly influential stories have appeared in magazines such as New Worlds, Amazing Stories and Interzone, and in several separate collections, including The Voices of Time, The Terminal Beach, The Day of Forever, The Venus Hunters, The Disaster Area, Vermilion Sands, Low-Flying Aircraft, Myths of the Near Future and War Fever.Now, for the first time, all of J.G. Ballard's published stories have been gathered together in one volume and set out in the order in which they were originally published, providing an unprecedented opportunity to review the career of one of Britain's greatest writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

R.I.P. J. G. Ballard: Understand His Development as a Writer Through His Lesser Known Works
J.G. Ballard's death was a concluding chapter in a life that in some ways had been stripped of humanity. Which is a not uncommon experience. After being stalked online, abandoned by half of the people I know after having acquired (and under official study for) tardive psychosis, tardive dysphrenia and tardive dysmentia and close to death each day one wonders if life gets worse. Or is that a bad thing in itself? I would say J.G. Ballard's passing would be one clear sign as being a living embodiment of "The Atrocity Exhibition" (his most surreal work) I could not ever communicate with him (in real world terms). But his life was certainly not just a fictional depiction of some sick and depraved imagination. If you read the book (far better than the movie) "Empire of the Sun" you can understand that his traumatic experiences shaped him to see the darker side of the human imagination. In "The Complete Short Stories" we see his evolution as a relatively conventional science fiction writer to outright warped dissertations on humanity ("Why I Want to F*** Ronald Reagan", written around the time of his true masterpiece "Crash") to more conventional stories along the lines of "Empire of the Sun". A typical story is "The Comsat Angels" (yes I did pick that one first being that it inspired one of my favorite post punk bands) where as it turns out "boy geniuses" are being cloned for quiz shows. But instead of a science fiction schema it instead depicts the true depersonalization and commifidication of the media (and this being in the 60's, update it now to the internet). So now in being trapped some world physically a step towards death but yet not entirely towards it (one we will all inhabit someday) its perhaps a bit depressing to have a fellow traveler depart. But in seeing how the world has totally lost its humanity perhaps it might make you pause for thought. Or at least keep reading. And please do so. Every page is worth it. ... Read more

Product Description
Examining the whole range of Ballard's writings from the early science fiction to Cocaine Nights, Professor Delville's study offers a critical and theoretically informed analysis of his achievements as a novelist and as a commentator on contemporary culture. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Angle on Ballard with Angle Between Two Walls
I read the only information that Amazon had posted on this title, a seemingly dry academic table of contents, and decided to go for it.I was desperately curious to see what kind of analysis this was about Ballard,and my chance was richly rewarded.I do have one caveat:this IS a denseacademic analysis.As an intense Ballard fan and possessing a graduatedegree, I fell in love with the book.As author Roger Luckhurst pointsout, Atrocity Exhibition is a hard title to have a discussion about.Ifyou've been searching for someone to analyze Ballard with, get this titleand join Roger.

The title refers to Ballard's nebulous place betweenmainstream and science fiction, the "angle between two walls." Luckhurst points out the attempts that have been made to categorizeBallard, but that's the last thing he is attempting to do here.InsteadLuckhurst focuses on several of the major themes and processes at workinside Ballard's fiction: surrealism, globalism, catastrophe.The chapteranalyzing Vermilion Sands was amazing.Reading Roger discuss thereadability AND unreadability of Ballard's work, I knew I had found akindred Ballardian.Hardcore fans, this is the second most requiredabout-Ballard title after the Re/Search #8/9 Ballard book. ... Read more

Product Description
The author of Empire of the Sun and other acclaimed novels and stories, British writer J. G. Ballard is here given a penetrating analysis, his work being explored in terms of its internal coherence, thematic continuity and development, and mythic and metaphysical aspects. Ballard's fiction is widely considered to be a critique of our secular, rational, technological culture, but the writer is shown not to be fatalistic, but, rather, concerned with the redemption and regeneration of the human psyche. This study examines Ballard's output over four decades and compares him to several British and American writers of the post-World War II era--within and beyond the often too-rigidly applied categorization of science fiction, as well as to Romantic visionaries of the past. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ballard Needs More Than Banal Jungian Analysis
It is very popular to give analysis to an incredibly disparate number of subjects (literature, art, film, history, behavior, anthropology, etc.) through the murky lens of Jungian psychology. This is exactly what Stephenson is attempting to do with Ballard. Such an effort is vastly short-sighted. Stephenson wants to use all the currently stylish thinkers in pop psychology, the New Age movement, and Western inner-self dogma to give analysis to Ballard. He wants to use Joseph Campbell's methods, Jungian methods, Elliade's ideas, and he wants to use romantic and inaccurate ideas of the utopian nature of primitive cultures, and he also uses banal words like "transcendence," "fertility rituals," "infinite," "sublime," "psychic forces," "ego," and on and on. Clearly in books like Concrete Island and Crash, such silly commonplace analysis is just more of what we've all heard before a thousand times from every stylish, transient postmod thinker. In 50 years the next stylish thinker will come out and supplant Jung and Elliade. Then the hordes will compare that method to art, literature, film, and Ballard.

Ballard is a thinker that is beyond rigid systems of all the numerous 20th century thinkers that Stephenson wants to fit Ballard in to. Ballard needs to be looked at from the lens of the underworld, as Hillman might say, rather than from the tiring lens of the dayworld. Then perhaps we can get an analysis of Ballard that is more than just the cud of Freud, Jung, and Elliade. ... Read more