alt Hacker NewsThe Illuminated Man: an unconventional portrait of JG Ballard
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One of my favorite authors and highly recommend his short stories [1] and the "ambiguous apocalypse" trilogy - The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World.
As one of collections intros said, Ballard is science fiction, but Inner Space, not Outer Space.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Short_Stories_of_...
It seems like the best authors - JG Ballard in this instance - are somehow resistant to modern biographers. Even the least worst Phillip K Dick biography (Divine Invasions) is over 30 years old!
Loved High rise, Concrete island, Empire of the sun. Also make sure to read this: https://www.jgballard.ca/uncollected_work/what_i_believe.htm...
Note that the title is probably an allusion to Ray Bradbury’s collection “The Illustrated Man”.
"The 60 Minute Zoom" is a good short story to start with.
I absolutely love JG Ballard. Crash is a classic, and High Rise is a fun one.
A favourite of mine. Do please check the interviews with him on youtube. Some authors try to show you the far future, he tried to show us the next 15 minutes.
Am I the only one that misread the title and expected to see something about the reclusive Bellard ?
I thought I was broad-minded enough to read Crash - I wasn't. I did enjoy other Ballard books.
Always tempting to say the dehumanising influences of his childhood informed his writing but I think that's unfair to his own sensibility and idea of modern creative writing.
He had a very eventful life. Across very eventful times.
I think the short stories work better than most of the longform although "the wind from nowhere" and "empire of the sun are very good".
I also think it's useful to remember he wasn't writing in a vacuum, British SF was exploring all kinds of forms, Michael Moorcock wrote deconstructed novels where chapter readings before flow text carried a whole emotional plane not exposed in the plot (the condition of muzak) and Brian Aldiss expored SF literary criticism taking the genre seriously for almost the first time. He was a writer in a context of exploratory writing.