A Ballard Binge

I've read a few J.G. Ballard books recently. Ballard is one of those authors who is not very well known amongst the general public, but is very popular amongst authors and literary peeps. It might help to think of him as the British equivalent to Philip K. Dick. Their books are very weird (although this doesn't tell you very much or prepare you for actually reading them). Ballard's work gave rise to the adjective 'Ballardian'; Dick's work gave rise to the adjective 'Dickian'. Their stories are often about modernity messing with people's heads, but in very different ways. They can both come across as quite pretentious. I'm not sure how much this comparison does either of them justice.

I first decided to read Ballard after Philip Reeve, author of the Mortal Engines series, recommended Ballard's early disaster SF novels while speaking at an event at the University of Nottingham. The three disaster novels are: The Drowned World (1962), about melting polar ice-caps flooding the earth; The Burning World (1964, revised and re-released as The Drought in 1965), about a global water shortage; and The Crystal World (1966), which has a pseudo-scientific explanation worthy of Doctor Who. Time is leaking out of the universe. Matter, once held by time like a saturated solution, is now crystallising across the cosmos. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.

These novels, unlike other disaster novels, focus on the psychological states of the characters rather than the outward effects of the catastrophe. The protagonists are mesmerised by the disaster, undergoing a psychological transformation as they explore the changing world, accepting it as the world to come. Ballard makes the catastrophe into a positive change.

I read The Drowned World in 2013, and found it slightly disappointing. It has its moments, but the story - less than 200 pages - felt like it dragged on and on and on, as though Ballard struggled to make it novel length. The Crystal World I read most recently, and similarly found it slightly disappointing and too long. What is most memorable about both of them is the evocative descriptions of the changed world:

'The road narrowed, avoiding the slope which led up to the house, but its annealed crust, blunted like half-fused quartz, offered a more comfortable surface than the crystal teeth of the lawn. Fifty yards ahead, Dr. Sanders came across what was unmistakably a jewelled rowing boat set solidly into the roadway, a chain of lapis lazuli mooring it to the verge. He realised that he was walking along a small tributary of the river, and that a thin stream of water still ran below the crust. This vestigial motion in some way prevented it from erupting into the spur-like forms of the rest of the forest floor.

As he paused by the boat, feeling the crystals along its sides, a huge four-legged creature half-embedded in the surface lurched forward through the crust, the loosened pieces of lattice attached to its snout and shoulders shaking like a transparent cuirass... Invested by the glittering light that poured from its body, the crocodile resembled a fabulous armoured beast. Its blind eyes had been transformed into immense crystalline rubies.'

- The Crystal World, Chapter 6

Slightly put off by my disappointment with The Drowned World, it was quite a while until I attempted another Ballard. At an event at the University of Nottingham, Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige (1995), recommended Ballard's short stories, saying that he found Ballard's novels disappointing. From my experience with Ballard's work so far, I find myself agreeing with Priest. Ballard's short stories are the shit. I picked up the anthology Myths of the Near Future (1982) at Loncon 3, and was surprised at the quality and diversity of its 10 stories.

In the titular story, humanity is suffering from 'space sickness' after space travel is abandoned. In the collapsed society, handfuls of people still dream of space exploration. Some walk around naked flapping their arms, hoping to transform into birds. The protagonist analyses pornographic imagery, thinking that the images of lustful union hide the key to the secrets of the universe:

'That evening he rested in his chair beside the empty pool, watching the video-cassettes of his wife projected on to the wall at the deep end. Somewhere in these intimate conjunctions of flesh and geometry, of memory, tenderness and desire, was a key to the vivid air, to that new time and space which the first astronauts had unwittingly revealed here at Cape Kennedy.'

Other stories from that collection include Having A Wonderful Time, told as a series of postcards from a woman trapped on a cheap holiday resort, and Theatre of War, a script for TV documentary on a twentieth century British civil war, with all the dialogue having been adapted from coverage of the Vietnam war.


The Voices of Time (1984) contains another 8 stories; The Disaster Area (1967) contains another 9. Vermillion Sands (1971) gets its name from the surreal futuristic holiday resort where its 9 stories - featuring cloud-sculptors, singing plants, living clothing, emotional houses, and more - are set. 

Short story collections are usually hit and miss, but Ballard's misses are at least interesting. His hits are spectacular. Some stories felt rushed. Here are some entertainingly bad sentences from stories that needed a final polish:

'In her face the diagram of bones formed a geometry of murder.'

- The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D, Vermilion Sands

'"Where, my God, where is he? Where is he?"

Shifting his emphasis from the first of these interrogatories to the second, as if to illustrate that the fruitless search for Hinton's whereabouts had been superseded by an examination of his total existential role in the unhappy farce of which he was the author and principle star, Dr Mellinger turned upon his three breakfastless subordinates.'

- Minus One, The Disaster Area

'Talking to her was like walking across a floor composed of blocks of varying heights, an analogy reinforced by the squares of the terrace, into which her presence had let another random dimension.'

- The Screen Game, Vermilion Sands

These add a bit of comic relief. When the main negative to the anthologies is a few bad sentences, that's got to be a good sign. At some point it would have been cheaper for me to splash out on The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard, but I didn't think I'd want to read that many. Having read four anthologies, I find myself still wanting to read the remaining six: War Fever (1990), The Venus Hunters (1980), Low-Flying Aircraft (1976), The Atrocity Exhibition (1969), The Day of Forever (1967), and The Terminal Beach (1964). I'm taking a break from Ballard so won't be reading those until next year at the earliest.

Enthused by my enjoyment of his short stories, I decided to give his novels another go. Concrete Island (1974) is my favourite so far (it is also Neil Gaiman's favourite; Gaiman wrote the introduction to the latest edition). A man crashes his car and traps himself on a piece of wasteland in the middle of a motorway intersection. This sounds like a stupid idea, but Ballard manages to convince you that it could happen, and therein lies the novel's power. My main criticism of Concrete Island is that the grass does a lot of seething ('they wandered through the seething grass', 'the grass seethed around him', etc).

The Unlimited Dream Company is the most surreal and most disappointing of the four novels I read. The protagonist crashes a light aircraft into the Thames. When he awakes, he may or may not have come back from the dead, may or may not be insane, and may or may not have magical sex powers. A lot happens in the story, but the narration is so monotonous that no matter what's going on - the protagonist transforms into a giant whale, then transforms into a stag and fucks the residents of Shepperton (who have transformed into does), then discovers that his semen causes vegetation to sprout from the ground, etc - it feels like nothing is happening. During the Magic Semen Sequence, the monotonous tone worked well: the narrator's seeming indifference made an entertaining contrast to the weird events described. This effect might have been intended for the whole book, but monotony overshadowed weirdness.

'Leaving the church, I threw the semen on to the cobbled pathway outside the vestry door. As I paused there, looking across the swimming pool at the replica aircraft in the grounds of the film studios, green-fluted plants with milk-red blossoms sprang through the stones at my feet. I stepped among them and set off towards the town, my swollen penis in my hand. As I ran through the trees I thought of Miriam. Again I ejaculated beside the tennis courts, and hurled my semen across the flower-beds.'

- The Unlimited Dream Company, Chapter 22

Of the Ballard books I've read, I highly recommend Concrete Island and all the short story collections. To a lesser degree, I also recommend The Crystal World. Despite my general dissatisfaction with his novels, I'm still tempted to read a few more of them. Those that most interest me are: Crash (1973), High Rise (1975), Empire of the Sun (1984), and The Kindness of Women (1991). I already own copies of Hello America (1981) and Rushing To Paradise (1994), so may as well give them a go too. However, I won't be reading those until next year at the earliest, because I'm having a Ballard break.