The Westway from a spot near Little Venice, west London. Photo: Simon Crubellier.

‘J.G. Ballard, the visionary creator of drowned worlds, Vermillion Sands, and now at work on a novel about a motorway desert island…’

Emma Tennant, Burnt Diaries.

‘Soon after three o’clock on the afternoon of April 22nd 1973, a 35-year-old architect named Robert Maitland was driving down the high-speed exit lane of the Westway interchange in central London. Six hundred yards from the junction with the newly built spur of the M4 motorway, when the Jaguar had already passed the 70 m.p.h. speed limit, a blow-out collapsed the front nearside tyre.’

J.G. Ballard, Concrete Island.

The real Concrete Island?

I WAS FASCINATED TO DISCOVER that Ballard had hung around Notting Hill in the 70s with Moorcock and the New Wave SF writers, and Emma Tennant and the Bananas magazine crowd. He must have walked the same streets that years later I was to haunt with my own damaged crew. Living within sight of the Westway, which I felt must have helped form his motorway mythology, I was moved to do some geo-detective work on Concrete Island, that great updating of Crusoe, and was surprised by what I found.

I think the evidence is quite strong for The Concrete Island to be based on the thin, V-shaped area to the south of the Westway interchange, trapped between the two arms of the West Cross Route. This grassed area can be clearly seen at the bottom centre of the Google map above, complete with tyre tracks from more recently crashed vehicles.

The Westway: photo by Simon Crubellier. Surely Ballard would have made his way past this site when rushing back to the suburbs from parties with the Ladbroke Grove crowd?

‘By now Ballard has shot off down the motorway he hymns, in the dark-green station wagon that adds to the image of the solid bourgeois…’

Emma Tennant, Burnt Diaries.

The intended radial motorway. Image via Chris’s British Road Directory.

There was a plan in the 1970s to extend the M4 motorway into central London and create a series of radial motorways, of which the Westway interchange would have been a node. In Concrete Island, JGB is merely working in his favourite time — the near future. Evidence for the motorway master plan can be seen at the northern apex of the Westway interchange, where the buds of the feeder roads for the northward part of the radial motorway, which was never built, can still be seen.

Under the Westway. Photo: Mike Holliday.

In the book, we learn that Maitland is on his way from his Marylebone office to pick up his son in Richmond Park, six miles away. The optimal Google Maps route suggested for this journey approaches the Westway interchange from the East via Marylebone Road and leaves it on the first exit down the West Cross route heading south. The Westway interchange is almost exactly six miles from Richmond Park. The exit onto the West Cross route forms the right-hand arm of the V shape below the circular roundabout and is, I suggest, the right-hand boundary of The Concrete Island.

‘Shielding his eyes from the sunlight, Maitland saw that he had crashed into a small traffic island, some two hundred yards long and triangular in shape, that lay in the waste ground between three converging motorway routes. The apex of the island pointed towards the west and the declining sun, whose warm light lay over the distant television studios at White City. The base was formed by the southbound overpass that swept past seventy feet above the ground. Supported on massive concrete pillars, its six lanes of traffic were sealed from view by the corrugated metal splash-guards installed to protect the vehicles below.’

Ballard, Concrete Island.

The iconic circular BBC TV Centre building at bottom left, visible from the island.

The cut-off space between the roads is indeed about two hundred yards long, and looking West beyond this island, Maitland would see the BBC TV studios — the circular building at the bottom left of the Google Map above. Looking east, he would be able to see his high-rise office in Marylebone, barely three miles away. Looking north, he would see the massive high-level circular interchange. What the Westway interchange is missing is a ‘tunnel below the overpass’, though I would suggest this is added for the dramatic effect of the noises it produces and its cave-like entrance to the ‘underworld’ that is the island. The orientation of my island is also North–South as opposed to West–East, but this might be confusion on JGB’s part — after all, it did, for him, point the way to his home in the West.

The Edwardian terraces of Oxford gardens on the St Quentin Estate, part of which lies under The Island. Photo: Eddie Adams Collection.

‘Parts of the island dated from well before World War II. The eastern end, below the overpass, was its oldest section, with the churchyard and the ground-courses of Edwardian terraced houses. The breaker’s yard and its wrecked cars had been superimposed on the still identifiable streets and alleyways.’

Ballard, Concrete Island.

Turning to the interior of the island, Maitland quickly discovers the remaining outlines of a series of Edwardian terraced houses. This is a fairly specific dating: strictly speaking, ‘Edwardian’ covers the period from 1901 to 1910. And sure enough, the St Quentin Estate, including the part of Latimer Road that was destroyed by the building of the Westway, was built between 1905 and 1914. A ‘central valley’ of Ballard’s Island is formed by a demolished former street. I suggest this could be Bard Road, or the road parallel to it; this can be seen on the overlayed 1953 and modern maps.

Overlay of modern Google Map and 1953 OS Map.

There is something quite unreal and magically marginal about this whole area of London. The Stadium that can be seen to the west of the island on the 1953 map is the White City stadium, where the 1908 Olympics were held, an emergency measure after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This was also the site of the fantastical Franco-British exhibition which gave White City its name.

Part of the White City Exhibition.

The bandstand at the bottom of the above photo can be seen on the overlaid map; it is now buried beneath the BBC TV complex. The exhibition contained a number of ‘Colonial Villiages’, including an ‘Irish Villiage’, Ballymaclinton, home of 150 colleens. Had visitors travelled a few hundred yards east, they would have come across the ‘Latimer Road Gypsy Caravan Site’, and might have seen a less airbrushed version of the Irish experience:

‘The ugliest place we know in the neighbourhood of London, the most dismal and forlorn … is the tract of land torn up for the brickfield clay half consisting of field laid waste in expectation of the house-builder, which lies just outside Shepherd’s Bush and Notting Hill. There it is that the gypsy encampment may be found, squatting within an hour’s walk of the Royal Palaces …’

London Illustrated News, 13 Dec 1879.

Over a hundred years later, things had not improved much for the travellers:

‘The filth and destruction were unimaginable … Physical chaos ruled half the site. An avenue of garbage had led me into the place. Rotting detritus lay in piles on pitches just inside the entrance. So did the wrecked bodies of a bus and caravan lying amid broken glass, smashed plywood and twisted metal.’

Christopher Griffin, on being made warden of the Westway travellers site, May 1984, from his book Nomads Under the Westway.

And here’s a demonstration that the events of Concrete Island were all too possible:

‘[In 1979] An articulated Customs and Excise lorry carrying a cargo of bonded whiskey crashed through the flyover and teetered on the parapet above two of the caravans, before the cabin crashed to the ground, killing its occupant. It is said that Travellers, Gypsies and policemen enjoyed liquor for weeks afterwards and that a bottle could be bought very cheaply in the neighbourhood.’

Griffin, Nomads Under the Westway.

The North boundary of the real island is made up of the modern travellers encampment, their caravans clearly visible in the first Google map. Is Concrete Island’s damaged tumbler, Proctor, intended to be some kind of carnie echo of the travellers? The island is also within a few hundred yards of the site of 10 Rillington Place, where John Christie carried out his grisly murders, a story that left an impression on Ballard as he recalls in Miracles of Life. The whole street was demolished to make way for the Westway.

…this was Christie country, and Rillington Place (later renamed), where the ghastly John Christie committed his murders, was only a few hundred yards away. Back in 1953 … I was walking up Ladbroke Grove when I found a huge crowd outside the police station. They filled the side street, watching the entrance to the car park behind the station. A police car approached, siren ringing, followed by a police van. The crowd drew back, leaving a woman in a red coat standing in the middle of the side street. The constables guarding the car park entrance made no attempt to move her, and she stood her ground, watched admiringly by the crowd as the police car and van swerved at speed through the gates.

The woman in the red coat was the sister of Timothy Evans, a mentally retarded friend of Christie who had been charged with the murder of his son and hanged in 1950. In fact, Christie had murdered the infant, and was himself hanged in 1953. Evans, too late, received a posthumous pardon in 1966. I can still remember the woman in the red coat, and her implacable gaze as she stared at the police van. Inside was John Christie, a now-deranged figure who had just been arrested for the murders he had committed at Rillington Place.

Ballard, Miracles of Life.

I wandered throughout this area in 1980, deep in therapy but pre-Concrete Island. I picked up my welfare cheques from the Post Office next to Hawkwind’s Hall of the Mountain Grill, bought frayed copies of Frendz from angry hippies, stumbled unchallenged into non-white shebeens, mourned the deaths of burned-out friends, and eventually chanced on the bizarrely named Maxilla Walk nearby. Finally, gloriously, I was drawn into the concrete cathedral under the Westway roundabout, where I felt the presence of the master. A couple of traveller lads asked me for a fag but soon twigged I had even less than them. This land under the drumming motorway was raw and magical and empty and beautiful, in a way I felt I could never explain.

North Kensington Amenity Trust poster. Image via Notting Hill History Timeline.

‘Following on from the Westway opening demos in 1970, there was a
campaign against the GLC plan for a
bus garage between Portobello Road and Ladbroke Grove. This resulted
in the founding of the North
Kensington Amenity Trust (now the Westway Development Trust), to
develop the 23 acres under the
flyover for the benefit and use of the local community. After ‘Robert
Maitland’ crashed through the barrier
on to the Westway roundabout Concrete Island and found himself stuck
there in the book, the director of
the Westway Trust from 1976 to 2005 was Roger Matland.
The motorway also features in JG Ballard’s more notorious 1973 novel
Crash, and Trellick Tower
influenced his 1975 book High Rise. Ballard contributed to Michael
Moorcock’s New Worlds science fiction
magazine when it was at 307 Portobello Road, and Hawkwind came up with
a `High Rise’ track featuring
the line ‘It’s a human zoo, a suicide mission.’ Ballard’s urban myths
of the near future would also influence
such punk and post-punk groups as the Clash, Joy Division, Throbbing
Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Ultravox,
the Human League, the Normal/Mute Records, Grace Jones and 23 Skidoo,
most of whom would appear
’under the flyover’ at Acklam Hall.’

Tom Vague, Notting Hill History Timeline, chapter 13: Underground Overground 1972-76.

A war-torn Ladbroke Grove. Image via Notting Hill History Timeline.

‘In the centre of the island were the air-raid shelters among which he was sitting.’

Ballard, Concrete Island.

As the area was bombed in WWII, there would almost certainly have been a number of air-raid shelters surviving — to my surprise I discovered the foundations of an Anderson shelter when replacing the back lawn of my house in West Norwood in London, in 1990.

The Island today, now filled in and a shadow of its former self, as seen from the railway. Photo: Mike Holliday.

Further evidence of the locality: there is a breaker’s yard under the Westway, to the West of Stable Way, just outside my imagined island. There is also a traffic sign on my island, as in the book, visible in the photo above. Although I haven’t found evidence of a cinema or a churchyard, I’m sure they can’t have been far away!

We also learn that a sergeant from Notting Hill police station urinated on Proctor. The actual police station is less than a mile from my island, at 100 Ladbrooke Grove. And finally, the mysterious Jane Sheppard says she is staying with friends near the Harrow Road, again within a mile of the site. I’m imagining her character might be based on another woman, on the run from her rich family, in nearby Notting Hill.

At one point Maitland assumes: “At any moment the ambulance attendants would arrive, he would be carried away to a hospital bed in Hammersmith.” This would surely be Hammersmith Hospital itself, the only large hospital in the area, virtually within sight of the Westway interchange and, ironically, where JGB now meets with his cancer specialist.

Of course the real location of Concrete Island is only to be found inside Ballard’s head. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting to wander around this little slice of Ballardland and breathe in the fumes that helped form that most modern story of a Crusoe stranded in the middle of a giant metropolis.

Photo by Jennie Middlemiss.

Here’s a transcription of the BBC Radio Front Row review of Miracles, presented by Mark Lawson and featuring Iain Sinclair and Hermione Lee.

Mike Bonsall

Mark Lawson: The work of the novelist JG Ballard divides fairly neatly into two sets, there are the novels which draw clearly on his own experience of the world, including the Booker prize-winning Empire of the Sun, which describes his internment in a Chinese prisoner of war camp during World War Two, and The Kindness of Women which fictionalises his experience post-war of being widowed with three young children. And then there are stories which take place in a distorted, warped, surreal version of the modern world, such as The Unlimited Dream Company and Crash — about sexual fantasists involved in car wrecks, which became one of the few modern movies to be widely banned. But confusingly, books of both kinds are likely to include central characters called Jim Ballard. Readers and critics though, who are policing the line between Ballard’s life and writing, are now helped with their enquiries by the author himself with the publication of his latest book, Miracles of Life: From Shanghai to Shepperton, an autobiography. To discuss it, I’m joined in the studio by the writer Iain Sinclair, whose books include Downriver, and from Oxford by the writer and critic Professor Hermione Lee. Iain Sinclair, we have to get this out of the way really, for any readers of Ballard, or admirers, the book contains a shock. In that calm voice that he’s used about so many terrible things, he explains he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer, his oncologist has made it possible for him to write this book. It’s another example of the unflinching way in which he can describe what happens to him.

Iain Sinclair: Yes, and he holds that revelation back until the end of the book, although in some senses it underwrites it, because this is a very generous book, it’s amazingly warm hearted, and although it is very similar to Empire of the Sun in some ways, and other books, there are these little glancing details that give you more of himself than he’s offered before. The parents appear in the prison camp, the sister appears. It’s very subtly done, I think it’s wonderfully crafted and in the classic Ballard way; it’s also a tremendous page turner.

ML: Hermione Lee, he’s always played, as we’ve said, with the boundaries between fact and fiction — Jim Ballard — in books which seemed autobiographical, and ones which almost certainly can’t be. He does, as Iain says, he does provide useful footnotes here.

Hermione Lee: Yes, it’s terribly interesting to set it against Empire of the Sun, which came out in 1984, when he was in his 50s, and which, as you say, drew on that childhood experience of being, you know, the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, and being in the internment camp. And what Ballard fans remarked on then, when that novel came out, was how close the images of that experience were to the fantasy novels, novels like The Drowned World. And now he goes over that time again and shows how haunted he’s always been by that mental furniture — as how could he not be — but also what’s gripping about it is that he shows what actually he made up in Empire the Sun, you know, which people said — oh, it’s much autobiographical than the other novels — and here, now you can see from, as Iain says, the extra things he tells us, how much he actually invented and imagined in Empire of the Sun. So it’s really fascinating to hold the two together

ML: Iain, having discussed that, give me an example of something that you learned from this that you hadn’t known about him… Or which changes the way…

IS: Um… the figure of his sister for example; I didn’t know about. And then there’s this extraordinary surreal image of the sister — when he’s a child — he builds a plywood barrier that goes onto the dinner table so that he doesn’t have to look at his sister, it as a peep-hole in it — this is like something out of Dali. And underwriting everything Ballard does, goes back to a remark he made many many years ago, which was that he tries to obey the surrealist formula, which is — to place the visible at the service of the invisible. And this is a very visible book, but beneath it are these shadows of the invisible that he’s releasing for the first time, and I find that quite moving.

ML: Hermione, on that point of surrealism…

HL: Yes, I was just going to say, that’s such a brilliant image to pick up, because that little spy-hole, which is so weird, is actually like Ballard’s eye, because elsewhere there are little tiny places that he crawls into, like the cockpit of a disused plane, and he’s looking out, he says, as if through a small window into a dream, and he talks very fascinatingly about the influence of dissecting corpses when he’s a medical student and Francis Bacon and Kafka and film noir. And he talks about Freud and surrealism as the key influences on his work and he calls them: ‘a secret corridor into a more real and more meaningful world’, so he’s really giving you a kind of interpretation of his whole work here.

ML: And Iain, he’s one of the few writers to have become an adjective — Ballardian — lots of writers used that after the death of Princess Diana, in that week. The artist Marc Quinn, on Front Row the other day, who’d made these impossible flowers, he said: ‘I think of them as Ballardian’. And he has — it’s apparent throughout this book, and the others, as Hermione was saying — that way of looking at the world and describing it.

IS: Yes, he says, often, he wanted to be a painter. He was a great friend of Paolozzi, Eduardo Paolozzi, a sculptor, and I think the dominant figures in his influence over the years were Paolozzi and Chris Evans, who was the kind of rogue scientist who provided him with outprints of scientific matters and who is the figure behind Vaughan, to some extent, in his novel Crash. Ballard really is like a kind of Delvaux — famously he has an imitation Delvaux in his house — and here, I think that there are key images that come back repeatedly in his fiction, as with the famous drained swimming pool. There’s also the figure of a Chinese man who’s strangled with wire on a railway station, who comes back in this book and comes back in the fictions. There’s, as Hermione said, there’s this moment when the boy gets onto an airfield and climbs into the cockpit of a plane. There is the bicycle ride through the streets of Shanghai — these things just come back again and again and again…

ML: Also, Hermione, the amazing revelation that he almost died in a car crash after writing Crash, and he reflects on what would have been made of that, in his life, if it’d happened.

HL: Absolutely extraordinary, he writes his own obituary — as in a sense he’s doing here, I feel. I mean, there is a kind of — benign benediction — going on in this book, but that, what I’m left with is this sense that, when he was a little boy, the mothers of his friends used to complain that he was always rearranging the furniture in their in their houses, and this is what he does, he rearranges the furniture.

Newsnight Review: Tony Parsons, Kirsty Wark, Julie Myerson and John Harris.

More Miracles discussion… Here’s a transcript of the Newsnight Review segment on BBC 2. Not as revealing as the interviews, and having Tony Parsons say that Empire is ‘possibly the great novel of the 20th century’ isn’t necessarily a good thing. Still, all publicity is good…

Mike Bonsall

Kirsty Wark: The writer JG Ballard responded to the diagnosis of advanced cancer in 2006 by writing his autobiography. He says Miracles of Life is the last story he will ever tell, and it’s one of early sensory overload, beginning in Shanghai, the place of his birth in 1930, and his home until the age of fifteen. Shanghai fuelled his imagination for novels, starting with sci-fi, to more modern dystopias. His time in a Japanese internment camp was the inspiration for his two semi-biographical novels; Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women; with death as a part of his life in occupied Shanghai. His preoccupation with violent sex and death resulted in his 1970 novel Crash, later to be one of the most controversial films of all time. Miracles of Life: from Shanghai to Shepperton, is the key to JG Ballard’s extraordinary life.

Reader: In Shanghai the fantastic, which for most people lies inside their heads, lay all around me, and I think now that my main effort as a boy was to find the real in all this make-believe. In some ways I went on doing this when I came to England after the War, a world that was almost too real. As a writer I’ve treated England as if it were a strange fiction, and my task has been to elicit the truth, just as my childhood self did when faced with honour guards of hunchbacks and temples without doors.

KW: Tony, I think I’m right in saying that, for a long time he said he wasn’t going to write an autobiography and he has, for you, did it illuminate his writing more?

Tony Parsons: Well it did, I mean, if you love Ballard, as I love Ballard, then you’ve certainly read Empire of the Sun, and you’ve seen the Spielberg film, and you’ve almost certainly read The Kindness of Women. So, when I was reading the early part, and the Shanghai years, there were so many images that seemed incredibly familiar to me; the beggar expiring at the gate of the family home, the young Chinese peasant who’s being tortured by Japanese soldiers at the end of the war, the boy, the English schoolboy who’s never been to England, riding round Shanghai on his bicycle. And I did have a sinking feeling, you know, I was worried that I was going to be disappointed, that so much of this stuff was familiar to me, but the glory of it is, it fills in the gaps, between what he is — you know his parents were with him in the prisoner-of-war camp — and he’s very illuminating round around about why he left his parents out of Empire of the Sun, but they were actually there. And when he gets back to England, it’s always — it’s a life that’s permanently dislocated, it’s always out of step, you know, he loses his wife at a tragically young age, he becomes a single father — at a time when there are no single mums around — and just does — I mean he’s a genius, and he’s got the genius eye for the killer detail, after his wife dies, he sees a happy couple embracing in the car in front of him and he sounds his horn with anger.

Newsnight Review: Julie Myerson and John Harris.

John Harris: Um, Ballard’s writing style, and I sort of had to remind myself of this by going back to the books of his that I own; I’ve read Empire of the Sun, Super-Cannes and um, another, name of which I’ve forgotten…

TP: Crash?

JH: … No, it’s the other piece with that. Anyway, very, very dry and dispassionately he writes, but the imaginative conceit behind what he writes is, what, kind of, enlivens it and renders it spectacular. Clearly, in the case of his real life, large parts of it are so spectacular that the same thing happens but it is written fantastically dryly and dispassionately and there are occasions when you start to think that it was written under duress and in a hurry, he does, he does race through. I mean he could have written his autobiography about twice as long; a good example is the early death of his wife which is dealt with in a matter of paragraphs, but you have to take into account that it was written under duress and in a hurry because he’s very seriously ill; once that’s happened, I’ll cut him all the slack in the world because I can’t think of anybody who’s had as interesting a life as him.

KW: There are some extraordinary scenes aren’t there, in Shanghai?

Julie Myerson: Oh yes, so many. I haven’t read any of his novels and this makes me want to read them; obviously I have an awareness of what his novels are. I came to it, sort of, not knowing about his novels and also, actually not knowing about the cancer diagnosis, so when I got to the end, having really got to know and like this extremely likeable man. It really took me by surprise, that did. I didn’t know his wife was going to die either and he does deal with these things with great economy and he’s not at all self-indulgent and he’s had the most extraordinary life, so, lots of things, first of all Shanghai but also, becoming a single parent. I think he’s writing Crash, looking after three young children, making bangers and mash, between bangers and mash and Blue Peter he’ll write a chapter and as a writer you so identify with that and he said ‘my greatest ally was the pram in the hall’.

TP: That’s an incredible line, that’s an unbelievable line…

JM: There is a warmth to him, he’s passionate about family and children, and what I love best about this book, even, not having read any of his books, is that it’s the story of someone who had quite an undernourished childhood and found huge artistic fulfilment through writing, but also found joy and fulfilment through family life, despite his wife dying, he’s really got something from family.

KW: And I suppose what happened was, that he had this extraordinary childhood that almost gave him enough in his bag to write for the rest of his life without having to do other extraordinary things.

Newsnight Review: Tony Parsons and Kirsty Wark.

TP: And it’s extraordinary too that I think it wasn’t uncommon for people to come back from China, or India, or Hong Kong, in their mid-teens, never having seen this place — and this is home — you’re home — you’re home now, and then moving from, I mean, you know, he had both extremes in Shanghai, he was in a prisoner of war camp and he also had armies of servants indulging him and so he’s always been dislocated, he’s always been out of step. I would urge you, and I would urge anybody, to read Empire of the Sun because I think it’s really, it’s possibly the great novel of the twentieth century.

KW: You talk about him writing very dispassionately but what he writes about is the most extraordinary — for example the Buick is going through — the families go out of the international settlement, and go through the old battlefields and there’s bodies lying here — and he’s only ten.

JH: The best illustration — Cocaine Nights was the book, I forgot — the best illustration of why dry and dispassionate writing often serves its subject matter well, is the occasion when he gets out of the prisoner of war camp and he goes to find Shanghai again and he’s on a railway platform, and he watches a party of Japanese soldiers slowly murdering a Chinese man — and he’s not florid — he doesn’t have to ladle on metaphor, he just says I was, what, nine or ten years old and this is what I saw, that’s so powerful…

TP: That’s one of the key scenes of Empire of the Sun and when I was reading this — and that’s when I thought — am I going to get the same stuff all over again but it’s…

JM: One of the most amazing things about the book is the way his experience in Shanghai, the way it comes back through his life in unexpected ways, so it isn’t till when he’s cutting up dead bodies as a medical student in Cambridge that he realises he’s embarking on a kind of moral and emotional journey to deal with that.

TP: He loves Shanghai, despite all the horror and death, he calls it the magical place, he calls it.

KW: Well, Miracles of Life by JG Ballard is published by Fourth Estate.

J.G. BALLARD’S BOOK REVIEWS FOR C&I
Notes by Mike Bonsall.

Published 31/03/1962

Dictionary of Chemistry. Including Chemical Engineering and fundamentals of Allied Sciences. Volume 1. German-English. By Dr. R. Ernst. Pp. 727. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd. 1961. 52s. 6d.

This German English dictionary contains some 45,000 terms, and in addition to organic, inorganic, physical, electro- and nuclear-chemistry, it includes material from those technologies which have a close relationship with chemistry–for example, oil, food and the sugar industry–and the more relevant terms encountered in the fields of geology, mineralogy, metallurgy and mathematics.

The author has wisely included words which are the same or nearly the same in both languages, as there are unexpected and important irregularities. Words with several meanings have been explained by synonyms. The dictionary also includes notes on the different usage of some words in English and American practice.

Inevitably every dictionary of this type is to some extent a compromise, but the attention Dr. Ernst has devoted to chemical technology and allied fields has ensured that this dictionary will prove a valuable addition to those already available to the chemist and translator.

J.G.B.

Published 02/06/1962

The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. By Sir Harry Melville. The New Whitehall Series, No. 9. Pp. 200. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1962. 25s.

This book describes how the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research promotes and undertakes scientific research in the United Kingdom, and shows how the present organisation has developed over the past forty-five years. It illustrates the work of such DSIR establishments as the National Physical Laboratory and the National Engineering Laboratory, whose functions are defined in terms of a field of science and technology, and of those research institutions with carefully defined practical objectives, such as the Forest Products Research Laboratory and the Building Research Station.

Some of the major contributions to scientific discovery made by DSIR research establishments are described. One of these was the invention of ion-exchange resins before the last war at the Chemical Laboratory, which led to the cheap recovery of uranium from low-grade ores. Another was the invention of “gas storage” for fruit, which allows it to be transported over greater distances and makes it possible for the sale of crops to be spread over longer periods of the year.

The role of the DSIR in awarding grants for scientific research in universities and colleges is illustrated, and the present role of the Research Associations is described.

The author has been Secretary to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and head of the DSIR, since 1956.

J.G.B.

Published 16/06/1962
“Writing a technical paper”: arguably something JGB has been doing for half a century.

Writing a Technical Paper. By D. H. Menzel, H. M. Jones and L. G. Boyd. Pp. vii + 132. London: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Ltd. 1961. 15s.

This book is intended to be of practical assistance to the graduate scientist, student or technical writer preparing a scientific paper or report. The authors emphasise the need for the clear statement of facts and ideas. They discuss some of the common flaws in technical exposition and describe methods of correcting them.

The first chapter, “The Evolution of a Paper,” demonstrates how the material for a paper should be assembled and prepared. The next chapter, “Revision,” describes the progress of the paper from the second to the final draft, and explains the correct presentation of footnotes, equations, tables and figures, and the use of abbreviations. Subsequent chapters consider style and grammar, and the last chapter, “The Physical Manuscript,” describes how the final typescript should be prepared and offers a few general rules for the correction of proofs.

J.G.B.

Published 04/08/1962
Shades of Ballard’s “Track 12″ written in 1958.

Poisoning by Drugs and Chemicals: An Index of Toxic Effects and their Treatment. By Peter Cooper. 2nd edn. Pp. x + 264. London: Alchemist Publications. 25s.

This book provides doctors, pharmacists, chemists, and all who are liable to be suddenly confronted with cases of poisoning with a pocket-size guide to the toxicology of the commonly handled drugs and chemicals.

Each monograph gives the alternative (including proprietary) names of the compound discussed, followed by concise notes on its pharmacological action, its absorption and excretion in the body, its toxic effects, possible effects of massive overdose, suggestions for treating cases of poisoning, and simple aids to identification.

An appendix discusses the more important first aid measures for use in cases of poisoning, e.g. artificial respiration, gastric lavage, the use of emetics and “universal antidotes”.

J.G.B.

Published 11/08/1962

Great Chemists. Edited by E. Farber. Pp. xxvi + 1642. London: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1962. 222s.

This collection of more than 100 biographies covers the development of the science of chemistry over the period of the last 3000 years. The opening chapters provide a brief historical introduction in which the work of Babylonian and Arabic chemists is considered. This is followed by a chapter entitled “Philosophical Alchemists and Practical Metallurgists” which consists of brief accounts of a few outstanding men, such as Albertus and Roger Bacon, who lived in the period between the Arabic chemists of the ninth and tenth centuries, and Paracelsus (1493-1541).

Subsequent chapters on Van Helmont, Glauber and Boyle introduce the age of modern chemistry, and the remainder of the book describes the lives and work of the great chemists and physical chemists of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. No living chemist is included. The roster of authors is itself drawn from the last two centuries.

No work of such scope could fail to be of great interest, or suggest numerous comparisons, for example between those great chemists who carried out chemical experiments at an early age, such as Ostwald and Werner, and those who found their way to chemistry after pursuing interests in entirely different fields, such as Kekulé and Windaus. Each of the biographies is preceded by an illustration of the subject.

J.G.B.

Published 01/09/1962

“Roget the eminent doctor”: another medic, like Ballard, who went on to greater things. The thesaurus itself is of course very valuable to a writer…

Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. Revised and modernised by Robert A. Dutch. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd. Pp. lii + 309. 30s.

The first draft of what was to become Roget’s Thesaurus was completed by Dr. Peter Mark Roget in 1806, but it was not until 1852 that the first edition made its appearance. After his death the task of revising the Thesaurus fell to his son. John Lewis Roget, who in turn passed on the task to his own son, Samuel Romilly Roget. In 1950, after numerous editions had appeared and the Thesaurus had long become established as a classic, the outright copyright was purchased by Longmans, who entrusted the task of preparing a new edition to Mr. R. A. Dutch, sometime Senior Scholar of Christ’s College. Cambridge.

This edition has been arranged on exactly same principles of classification as Roget’s original. The text has been completely rewritten and greatly expanded. There are over 50,000 new entries, and the number of cross references has been increased. The index has also been entirely revised.

Dr. Peter Mark Roget was born in Soho in 1779. A scientific prodigy, he entered the University or Edinburgh at the age of 14, and at 19 had graduated as an M.D. Subsequently he became an authority on physiology and anatomy. He invented a slide-rule, a pocket chess board, and in his spare time took up botany. It was from this pursuit that the Thesaurus was born, when the possibility occurred to him of classifying words in the way in which botanists classify plants and their families.

J.G.B.

Published 08/09/1962

Dictionary of Commercial Chemicals. By F. D. Snell and C. T. Snell. 3rd edn. Pp. viii +714. London: D. Van Nostrand Co. Ltd. 1962. 97s.

The large number of chemicals recently added to those already in commercial use have now been incorporated in a revised and enlarged edition of this reference work. As in the past, it provides information on the composition of products as sold commercially and has been prepared especially for the manufacturer and others connected with the chemical industry. Technical terms have either been defined or limited to those familiar to the reader with an elementary knowledge of inorganic and organic chemistry. Chemical formulae are used in order to define briefly composition and structure.

Only items in general use are included, and the term “chemical” is used to describe basic materials as well as mixtures containing several ingredients. For each product the information supplied includes name, formula, general description, method of manufacture, common impurities or contaminants, commercial grades and uses.

J.G.B.

Published 22/09/1962

Concise Chemical and Technical Dictionary. Edited by H. Bennett. 2nd edn. Pp. xxxix + 1039. New York: Chemical Publishing Co. Inc. 1962. $15.

Some 60,000 definitions, including about 5000 entries, are contained in this enlarged second edition, which covers every field of scientific and technical development. It has been prepared for both the professional scientist and the lay reader, and gives the basic technical terms internationally accepted by chemists and engineers

The present edition contains information on newly developed synthetic compounds, processes and apparatus; descriptions of the more important manufacturing techniques and machinery, raw materials and finished products.

A special feature of the dictionary is the compilation of several thousand proprietary products in such fields as synthetic resins and plastics, food, drugs and cosmetics. An addendum lists recent trade-names and definitions.

J.G.B.

Published 29/09/1962

Riegel’s Industrial Chemistry. Edited by J. A. Kent. Pp. xii + 963. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd. 1962. 160s.

This reference book covers the main sections of the chemical industry, and describes fundamental chemistry, basic chemical engineering operations, economic and production aspects, and practical applications. The chemical aspects of the pharmaceutical and atomic energy industries are considered separately. Particular emphasis is given to those industries which have made rapid progress in recent years, including the plastics, rubber and man-made fibres industries. The book also contains information on industrial water supplies, the disposal of industrial wastes, fuels and their utilisation.

A large number of illustrations are provided, including process flow diagrams, production statistics, tables and diagrams of equipment.

It is now 34 years since the first edition of “Riegel” was published, and the present editor and authors maintain the tradition established by their predecessors.

J.G.B.

Published 13/10/1962

Dictionary of Chemistry and Chemical Technology. In four languages: English. German. Polish and Russian. Edited by Z. Sobecka, W. Biernacki, D. Kryt and T. Zadrozna. Pp. 724. London: Pergamon Press. 1962. 200s.

This dictionary contains some 12,000 terms from all branches of theoretical and applied chemistry, chemical engineering, chemical and related technologies, and essential scientific terms frequently encountered in chemical literature. The lexicographic basis of the dictionary was provided by the chemical card register of the Technical Terminology Division of the Polish Technical Publishing Institute. This material was supplemented from recent publications in such fields as nuclear physics, radiation chemistry and plastics. Sonic English terms in current use have not been included because corresponding expressions do not exist in one or other of the remaining three languages.

The entries are arranged in alphabetical order of the English terms and are followed by the corresponding German, Polish and Russian terms determined from the literature of those languages. The names of chemical compounds have been restricted to group names and to particular compounds of practical importance. Many scientific names, e.g. Geneva nomenclature similarly expressed in each of the four languages, have not been included as the editors believe these would serve no useful purpose.

Immediately following the main text there is an index of English Synonyms for chemical compounds, to which the user may refer for terms not found in the main text.

J.G.B.

Published 03/11/1962

Technical Market Research. By R. Williams. Pp. 18. Geneva: Roger Williams Technical & Economic Services, S.A. 1962.

This book is based on a series of lectures delivered to the Chemists’ Club of New York in January-March 1962 and subsequently edited for publication. The author describes what he believes to be the wisest method of conducting market surveys and the difficult problems involved with specialised industrial products. He claims that the rule-of-thumb methods once used by company executives in surveying markets are no longer valid, and outlines a more systematic procedure for conducting interviews, preparing reliable reports and assessing a market’s potential. The author’s style is informal and idiomatic, illustrated by a wealth of amusing personal anecdotes.

The lectures are followed by the question and answer discussions tape-recorded at the meetings.

J.G.B.

Published 10/11/1962
I assume this is “the” Bob Maxwell, who did produce science journals… Dry humour at expense of Soviet system: complains that Pasternak and Gagarin are missing.

Information U.S.S.R. Edited and compiled by Robert Maxwell. Pp. xii + 982. Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd. 200s.

This encyclopaedia is the first of a series of volumes that will eventually cover all the countries of the world. It will be a principle of the series that the articles in each volume will be written by authors who are nationals of and resident in the relevant country. Pages 1-763 of the present volume were translated from Volume 50 of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia and contain articles on the geography and history of the Soviet Union, its political and governmental institutions, industry, science and the arts. There are also sections on the trade unions, sport, education, religion and the church.

Appendices are provided giving the official national census figures, addresses and departments of establishments for higher education, and a guide to foreign trade organisations in the U.S.S.R. The final appendix is a resume of the Third Programme adopted at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, giving its programme for the next 20 years. There are also brief biographies of some prominent Russian statesmen.

The encyclopaedia appears to contain no reference later than 1960. Among omissions are the names of Paternak and Gagarin.

J.G.B.

Published 17/11/1962

Index to Reviews, Symposia Volumes and Monographs in Organic Chemistry. For the period 1940 1960. Compiled and Edited by N. Kharasch, W. Wolf and E. C. P. Harrison. Pp. vii + 345. Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd. 70s.

Approximately 7000 references are listed in this volume, each of which, with few exceptions, was inspected by the compilers. Articles in English, French and German are included, and titles are given in English or the English equivalent. An author index allows the user to locate immediately all the works of a particular author for the period 1940-1960.

The articles included are not only those in standard review journals, but in major reference works of organic chemistry, such as the Houben-Weyl compendium and Traité de Chimie Organique.

The names of editors have been provided and the appendix contains a list of publishers’ addresses.

J.G.B.

Published 12/01/1963

Practical and Industrial Formulary. By Mitchell Freeman. Pp. v + 297. New York: Chemical Publishing Co. Inc. 1962. $7.95

This book comprises a collection of formulae covering a wide field of formulated products. The contents include products tinder the following section headings: adhesives, cleaning preparations, cosmetics, perfume oils, perfumes, food products, furniture and metal polishes, inks, insecticides and rodenticides, paints, pharmaceuticals and proprietary preparations, stain removers and veterinary preparations. There are three appendices: weights and measures with conversion tables, composition of foods and atomic weights. There is a biography of suppliers (U.S.) of the chemicals mentioned.

The book, which is rather superficial in treatment, is unlikely to find readers among chemists working in a particular field, but may be useful for those engaged in work where acquaintance with a wide range of uses for chemicals is desirable.

J.G.B.

Published 26/01/1963
Evidence of some “toilet soap” humour. Presumably the chapter on diet was too fat to fit in.

Modern Cosmeticology. By R.G. Harry. Revised by J. B. Wilkinson in co-operation with R. Clark, E. Green and T. P. McLaughlin. Vol. I of The Principles and Practice of Modern Cosmetics. Pp. xxiv + 683. London: Leonard Hill (Books) Ltd. 1962. 84s.

The publication of the fifth edition of “Harry” six years after the fourth edition is an indication of the increasing speed with which cosmetic science is developing. The revision has involved the complete rewriting of several chapters with alterations and additions to all others. The chapter on toilet soap has been omitted as being impossible to deal with adequately as a manufacturing problem. The chapter on diet and health has also been omitted for reasons of space. The growing importance of pressurised packs has called for a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject.

The original author stressed the need to provide a book which was not a mere formulary, but would show the relation between cosmetic science and basic physiological principles. Newly acquired knowledge has not necessarily overthrown the older empirical formulae but has frequently provided an explanation previously lacking for their success and has indicated directions of improvement. Throughout the new revision, the revisors have successfully demonstrated these relationships.

J.G.B.

Published 09/02/1963
His longest review. Freud: ‘Royal road to the Unconscious’. Most dreams unpleasant, and get worse as we get older. Hallucinations etc if no dreaming. Puzzle & Joke.

The Science of Dreams. By Edwin Diamond. Pp. 246. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd. 1962. 21s.

The universal experience of dreams, and the conviction that they conceal part of man’s essential image of himself, have made them a subject of unfading interest throughout history, to the most primitive societies and the most sophisticated. One of the oldest written documents in existence, a papyrus of the 12th Dynasty, is an Egyptian book of dream interpretations, and to Freud, in the present century, the dream was “the royal road to the unconscious.” Within the last 20 years the orthodox Freudian view generally accepted in Europe and America has been amplified by work carried out by experimental psychologists in the United States. A popular account of this work is given in “The Science of Dreams.”

The hypothesis that the rapid eye movements observed at intervals throughout sleep might indicate the occurrence of a dream was apparently confirmed by the ability of subjects roused during these periods to recount their dreams with remarkable clarity and detail; this occurred in the case of persons who claimed they had never previously dreamed. Subsequent work suggested that everyone has an average of five dreams per night, each lasting 20 minutes; that contrary to popular belief digestive or emotional upsets do not affect the length or intensity of dreams, but only the ease with which they are recalled; that the majority of dreams are unpleasant and grow more so with increasing age; that even intense professional and domestic anxieties play little part in the subject matter of dreams; and that the congenitally blind experience “tactile” dreams. A curious discovery was that the deliberate deprivation of normal dreaming produced tension and irritability, even during an otherwise adequate period of sleep, and that hallucinations and psychotic collapse eventually resulted.

Despite the ingenuity and patience of the experimenters, the nature of the mechanisms generating dreams remains as elusive as ever. If anything, these studies suggest that for all its beguiling mystery the dream is merely a low-level psychic activity of little significance, perhaps similar to certain types of childhood play, and that its content, although cast in dramatic form, is of less importance than the act itself. Only where marked aberrations occur is a careful analysis of individual dreams of value to the physician. Even here, as in the experiments described, the role of the observer remains profoundly equivocal.

In view of the vast number of dreams experienced during a single lifetime, the catalogue of dreams which have furnished any major scientific revelation remains remarkably meagre; Kekulé’s vision of the benzene ring is among the few examples. Undeterred, however, the author offers his readers a simple conundrum (complete the series O, T, T, F, F,-,-) by which they can test the deductive powers of their own sleeping intelligences. No more than 15 minutes immediately before and after sleep should be devoted to the problem. Evidently some 80% of subjects tested dreamed of the problem, and a few even solved it during their dreams.

Those readers who fail to solve it may be interested to know that the Abundavita Corporation of America offers a $395 hypnopaedic “package” consisting of a gramophone, speaker and a 25-lesson course on such topics as “Money–What It Is and How to Have Plenty of It.”

J.G.B.

Published 06/04/1963
Back to the grindstone…

Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. 44th edition. Editor in Chief: Charles D. Hodgman. Pp. xxv + 3604. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications Ltd. 1963. 105s.

Continuing the past policy of the editors, the Handbook is being revised at frequent intervals. The general features and scheme of arrangement of previous editions have been retained, and the aim throughout has been to present in condensed and convenient form as large an amount of accurate and up-to-date information in the fields of chemistry and physics as possible. An attempt has been made to include material on all branches of chemistry and physics and the closely allied sciences, and the present edition contains a periodic chart, a list of atomic weights of the elements and a recalculation of the fundamental constants based upon the new atomic weights scale. Among other additions, there is a new table of physical and chemical properties of the rare earth metals and supplementary material for synthetic oils, fats and waxes.

J.G.B.

Published 04/05/1963

Use of the Chemical Literature. Edited by R. T. Bottle. Pp. x + 231. London: Butterworth & Ltd. 1962. 35s.

Sources of information and reference available to the newly qualified chemist are now so numerous that a book designed to assist him in the selection of those most suitable for his own research work is an invaluable asset. Most of the chapters in the present book are based on lectures given at the short courses organised by Liverpool College of Technology during the past three years. Among the chapters are “Translations and their Sources with Special Reference to Russian Literature,” “Nuclear Chemistry,” “Use of Patent Literature,” “Government and Trade Publications of Interest to the Chemist,” and “History of Chemistry.” There is an appendix containing a brief glossary of terms used in photocopying and microfilming, and a selection of practical exercises, with notes on their solution, designed to familiarise the reader with the correct methods of tackling literature problems.

J.G.B.

Published 01/06/1963
In same edition as the article about Road Research Laboratory.

Paint, Oil and Colour Year Book. 3rd edn. Pp. 401. London: Scott Greenwood & Sons Ltd. 1963. 50s.

This third edition of the Year Book is a guide to suppliers of products and equipment used in the paint, printing ink and allied industries. A number of new headings has been added to the Raw Materials and Machinery sections and the whole book has been revised to bring the sources of supply up to date.

The editors have also added to the Machinery and Equipment Section a few ancillary products, e.g. industrial detergents and paint brushes. In addition a section covering addresses of Trade Associations and Technical Societies has been added.

J.G.B.

Published 24/08/1963
Ballard can’t resist dwelling on the word ‘ablation’ which has meanings in surgery and space travel, two favourites: ablation (surgical) — the removal of any part of the body by mechanical means; ablation (astrophysics) — the blunt end [of the capsule] acts as an ‘ablation shield’ for re-entry.

Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. Vol. 1. A to Aluminium. Second Edition, completely revised. London: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1963. Price: £13 per volume (for subscribers to complete set of 18 volumes).

The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology appeared in 15 volumes, of which Volume 1, A to Anthrimides, was published in 1947, and the final volume, including the index, in 1956. A similar schedule will be maintained for the succeeding volumes of the second edition, which is a complete revision of its predecessor. All the articles on technological topics have been rewritten in many cases by different authors. The general scheme of the Encyclopedia has not been changed, but the list of titles is not exactly the same. The first two articles in this volume, Abherents and Ablation, are entirely new. Changes in format are relatively minor. The first edition concentrated on presenting United States technology; in the second edition a number of articles have been contributed from abroad, and the intention has been to present chemical technology without regard to national boundaries.

J.G.B.

Published 05/10/1963

Food Processing & Packaging Directory, 1963 1964. Edited by R. De Giacomi. Pp. 1065. London: Tothill Press Ltd. 60s.

The extensive revision of the sixth edition of this directory reflects the changes that have taken place in the industry since the previous edition. The tendency towards diversification formerly noted has been superseded by a period of re-grouping and consolidation. Examples are to be found in the recent merger of the three major ice-cream producing companies, the re-grouping of the frozen food sections of two of the latter, and the disposal of its sugar confectionery interests by one of them.

One new section has been added, namely a personal index which contains all the names of the individuals listed in the Food Processors and preceding sections. A tribute is paid in the preface to the late C. L. Hinton, the compiler of the Food Standards and Regulations section of the Directory since its inception. The revision for the sixth edition has been undertaken by B. R. Knapp, the Information Officer of the British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association, who continued this aspect of Hinton’s work at the British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association after his retirement. Ah the other sections of the Directory have been retained and fully revised.

J.G.B.

Published 19/10/1963
About scientific inspiration, mention of serendipity, after Freud, Jung?

The Flash of Genius. By A. B. Garrett. Pp. ix + 249. London: D. Van Nostrand Co. Ltd. 1963. 30s.

“The Flash of Genius” consists of accounts of 51 discoveries in the fields of physics and chemistry, as far as possible in the discoverer’s own words, describing the important event or experiment which led to the discovery. Each account is prefaced by a brief introduction which places the discovery within the context of contemporary work and knowledge. The accounts range from the discovery of oxygen in 1774 by Joseph Priestley to the discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming and of nylon by Wallace Carothers.

The book concludes with appendixes on Serendipity, Nobel Prize-winners, the ages of discoverers, and the dates of birth and nationality of scientists.

J.G.B.

Published 30/11/1963
Ballard’s final C&I review.

Committees. How they work and how to work them. By E. Anstey. Pp. 116. London: George Allen Unwin Ltd. 1963. 15s.

This book analyses the functioning of different kinds of committee groups and describes the factors which make for efficiency or inefficiency. The author discusses different types of committee and their purposes; how to lead a discussion so as to help bring out a genuine group view; the roles of chairman and secretary; how individuals influence committee decisions; good and bad tactics; and the preparation of reports. An appendix contains the proceedings of a specimen Committee Meeting.

J.G.B.

J.G. Ballard in 1960. In the background is a poster of his ‘Project for a new novel’, made two years earlier.

Chemistry & Industry … was a good place to work because, of course, the office of any scientific magazine is the most wonderful mail drop. It’s the ultimate information crossroads. Most of it went straight into the wastepaper basket, but en route I was filtering it like some sort of sea creature sailing with jaws open through a great sea of delicious plankton. I was filtering all this extraordinary material.”

J.G. Ballard, ‘Shanghai Jim’ (BBC documentary, dir. James Runcie, 1990).

From 1958 to 1964, J.G. Ballard worked as deputy editor and part-time writer at Chemistry & Industry, the journal of the Society of Chemical Industry. When he started he was also a struggling, disillusioned writer of science fiction; by the time he left C&I he was a successful full-time novelist. MIKE BONSALL discovers exactly how that transition occurred, as he delves into the archives at C&I to uncover ultrarare Ballardiana, including Ballard’s earliest non-fiction reviews, the text of which we present here in full — never before seen outside the magazine itself. As Mike argues, what happened at C&I codified the tropes Ballard was to return to throughout his career — the scientific, technical and imaginative motifs that shape the very essence of what we’ve come to know and love as ‘Ballardian’.

J.G. BALLARD’s grim war experiences were followed by grim experiences in post-war Britain. He dropped out of medical school after two years, then dropped out of English after a year; he quit his flying career similarly. After that came a succession of short-lived, low-level jobs: encyclopaedia salesman, porter and copywriter.

Ballard married in 1955, and his first child in 1956 was followed by two more soon after; he was under serious financial pressure and help was given only stintingly by his disapproving parents. During this time he had sold a couple of short stories to Ted Carnell, who must have twisted his arm to come to the World SF Convention in London, in 1957 — the year of Sputnik, the apogee of space opera. Carnell himself was Chair of the convention and John W Campbell was guest of honour and prize speaker. It was the height of ‘hard SF’ and Campbell was the champion of Space Opera, and therefore the scourge of the New Wave — and Ballard. As JGB later said about the convention, ‘That shattered me, and then I dried up for about a year. For over a year I didn’t write any SF at all. I was disillusioned and demoralized.’ But Ballard would find a host of new ideas, new techniques and new ways of creating within the stuffy confines of Chemistry and Industry.

LEFT: Cover of C&I, 12/7/58. When Ballard began his tenure there, it was a fairly dour journal, still mired in the post-war years.

C&I was an ideal place for Ballard to make a new start: the hours were lax and he was even able to do some creative writing there. Ballard later said, ‘One of the reasons my fiction of the early 60s has a high science content is because I was immersed in scientific papers of all kinds continually’.

The editor of the journal was a chemist rather than a journalist, so, as Ballard later recounted, ‘I did all the basic subbing, marking copy up for the typesetter … doing make-up and paste-up … I used to go on works visits, visits to laboratories and research institutes. I wrote a few articles — scientific reporting — and I reviewed scientific books.’ Ballard’s time at C&I is key to his development as a writer: he learned new skills, was given the freedom to experiment, and had time to shake off the feeling that hard SF was the only kind of speculative fiction that was acceptable.

The C&I Offices in Belgrave Square (photo by Tim Chapman, who held Ballard’s former job in the 1990s and may even have inherited Ballard’s desk!).

In 1958 Ballard made a series of photocopied collages — ‘Project for a new novel’ — that were, he says, ‘sample pages of a new kind of novel, entirely consisting of magazine-style headlines and layouts, with a deliberately meaningless text, the idea being that the imaginative content could be carried by the headlines and overall design, so making obsolete the need for a traditional text except for virtually decorative purposes.’

The few pages he did actually produce are obviously influenced by his new-found skills in layout work:

Detail from Ballard’s ‘Project for a new novel’ (1958).

Ballard has said he was inspired by the bold typography of C&I’s sister journal, Chemistry and Engineering News (C+EN), the journal of the American Chemical Society, and that he used text from this journal as ‘filler’ in his collages.

Detail from Ballard’s ‘Project for a new novel’ (1958).

I was fascinated by the possibility of disassembling these Burroughsian ‘cut-ups’ into their original forms, and by the possibility of seeing the roots of some of Ballard’s earliest and most lasting obsessions.

Detail from ‘Project for a new novel’ (1958).

Although influenced by C+EN, Ballard’s typography seems rather to prefigure advertising from a later C&I (2/6/62):

Detail from ‘Project for a new novel’ (1958).

Ballard later said, ‘I was very proud of those pages. Moorcock published them in New Worlds three or four years ago. They were like chromosomes in a way, because so many of the subsequent ideas and themes of mine appeared in those pages. Kline, Coma, Xero — they’re all there. I don’t know. I used to make these things up!’

The pages were in fact published in a special New Worlds edition of mostly visual material in summer 1978, where they are described as ‘displays’. (Interestingly the middle two pages are transposed in New Worlds compared to the photograph of the hoarding at the start of this article.)

Detail from ‘Project for a new novel’ (1958).

Sadly, despite a thorough search, and although the body text of the pieces is obviously taken from an American chemical journal, I was unable to find any evidence of them in back editions of C+EN from that time.

About this ‘filler’ text, Ballard later said, ‘Curiously enough, far from being meaningless, the science news stories somehow became fictionalised by the headings around them.’ This is the kind of technique Ballard was to return to repeatedly, for example in his ‘plastic surgery’ pieces [collected in RE/Search's reprint of The Atrocity Exhibition], where the insertion of a celebrity name transforms the banal medical text, or his short fictions which masquerade as psychiatric reports [eg 'Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan'] or war journalism [eg 'Theatre of War'].

I have always been a voracious reader of what I call invisible literatures — scientific journals, technical manuals, pharmaceutical company brochures, think-tank internal documents, PR company position papers — part of that universe of published material to which most literate people have scarcely any access but which provides the most potent compost for the imagination … ‘

J.G. Ballard. ‘The Pleasures of Reading’.

And there is potent compost indeed in C+EN. The erotic beauty of the tail fin, for example, is much in evidence:

Advertisement from C+EN, 14/4/58.

And there is a near car-crash:

Advertisement from C+EN 14/7/58.

Did Mr F start out as Hydrogen Fluoride, which forms the most corrosive of acids?

Advertisement from C+EN 14/7/58; plus detail from Ballard’s ‘Project for a new novel’ (1958).

Could the name ‘Kline’, a recurring Ballard character, be taken from Smith, Kline and French, as suggested by Tim Chapman?

Advertisement from C+EN 27/1/58.

Or is he part of the electromagnetic spectrum? In ‘You and Me and the Continuum’, from The Atrocity Exhibition, one of the objects mentioned is a ‘spectro-heliogram of the sun taken with the K line of calcium’:

Advertisement from C+EN 6/10/58.

There is also an appearance of that most enigmatic island, Eniwetok, a recurring motif in Ballard’s work. The ‘pace of missile firings quickens’ must have speeded Ballard’s pulse:

Advertisement from C+EN 4/11/57.

Eventually he would abandon the task, and sit down in the dust, watching the shadows emerge from their crevices at the foot of the blocks. For some reason he invariably arranged to be trapped when the sun was at zenith — on Eniwetok, the thermo-nuclear noon.”

J.G. Ballard. ‘The Terminal Beach’ (1964).

As Catherine Austin walked around the converted gymnasium these bizarre images, with their fusion of Eniwetok and Luna Park, Freud and Elizabeth Taylor, reminded her of the slides of exposed spinal levels in Travis’s office.”

J.G. Ballard. ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ (ch. 1), in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970).

Some of the C&I adverts from Ballard’s time are also worth noting, as copywriters were looking forward a decade to the fashions of the 60s:

Advertisement from C&I 28/2/59.

Some of the advertising took a slightly surreal turn in Ballard’s later years at the journal, like this example, featuring an oddly disturbing schoolgirl’s biochemical interventions:

Advertisement from C&I c.1962.

Here’s an earlier ad from Chemical & Engineering:

C+EN 19/05/1958.

Desperately trying to make chemicals interesting… ‘Here comes the Managing Director. Anybody want a bloodstained copywriter — immediate delivery?’ (shades of Super-Cannes?):

Advertisement from C&I 30/5/59.

In the second half of his employment at C&I, JGB went part-time and one of his duties was to write short book reviews. Most are factual — short, dry reviews of long, dry technical reference works that seem little more than fillers. But one stands out and is worth quoting in full. Ballard’s review of The Science of Dreams is his longest and most enthusiastic by far:

The Science of Dreams. By Edwin Diamond. pp. 246. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd. 1962. 21s.

The universal experience of dreams, and the conviction that they conceal part of man’s essential image of himself, have made them a subject of unfading interest throughout history, to the most primitive societies and the most sophisticated. One of the oldest written documents in existence, a papyrus of the 12th Dynasty, is an Egyptian book of dream interpretations, and to Freud, in the present century, the dream was “the royal road to the unconscious.” Within the last 20 years the orthodox Freudian view generally accepted in Europe and America has been amplified by work carried out by experimental psychologists in the United States. A popular account of this work is given in “The Science of Dreams.”

The hypothesis that the rapid eye movements observed at intervals throughout sleep might indicate the occurrence of a dream was apparently confirmed by the ability of subjects roused during these periods to recount their dreams with remarkable clarity and detail; this occurred in the case of persons who claimed they had never previously dreamed. Subsequent work suggested that everyone has an average of five dreams per night, each lasting 20 minutes; that contrary to popular belief digestive or emotional upsets do not affect the length or intensity of dreams, but only the ease with which they are recalled; that the majority of dreams are unpleasant and grow more so with increasing age; that even intense professional and domestic anxieties play little part in the subject matter of dreams; and that the congenitally blind experience “tactile” dreams. A curious discovery was that the deliberate deprivation of normal dreaming produced tension and irritability, even during an otherwise adequate period of sleep, and that hallucinations and psychotic collapse eventually resulted.

Despite the ingenuity and patience of the experimenters, the nature of the mechanisms generating dreams remains as elusive as ever. If anything, these studies suggest that for all its beguiling mystery the dream is merely a low-level psychic activity of little significance, perhaps similar to certain types of childhood play, and that its content, although cast in dramatic form, is of less importance than the act itself. Only where marked aberrations occur is a careful analysis of individual dreams of value to the physician. Even here, as in the experiments described, the role of the observer remains profoundly equivocal.

In view of the vast number of dreams experienced during a single lifetime, the catalogue of dreams which have furnished any major scientific revelation remains remarkably meagre; Kekulé’s vision of the benzene ring is among the few examples. Undeterred, however, the author offers his readers a simple conundrum (complete the series O, T, T, F, F,-,-) by which they can test the deductive powers of their own sleeping intelligences. No more than 15 minutes immediately before and after sleep should be devoted to the problem. Evidently some 80% of subjects tested dreamed of the problem, and a few even solved it during their dreams.

Those readers who fail to solve it may be interested to know that the Abundavita Corporation of America offers a $395 hypnopaedic “package” consisting of a gramophone, speaker and a 25-lesson course on such topics as “Money–What It Is and How to Have Plenty of It.”

J.G.B.

This appeared on 9th February 1963 and has echoes of JGB’s short story ‘Manhole 69′, published six years earlier, in which a group of volunteers have their ability to sleep removed and slowly descend into madness. Even Papa Freud gets a mention in this review. The article is unusually light and jokey, and the very appearance of a book on dreams is unusual — surely it would never have been sent for review to a journal of industrial chemistry? Was it given to Ballard by his friend Dr Christopher Evans, whose ‘computer memory-purging’ theory of dreaming also seems to make an appearance in the review? After this effort, JGB’s reviews begin to appear more sporadically and eventually petered out altogether. Did this unusual review lead to him having his freedom curtailed?

(See the appendix for the full text of Ballard’s initialled reviews).

A particularly significant article appeared in C&I on 1 June 1963, a lovingly illustrated, nine-page article about the brand new Road Research Laboratory:

C&I article, 1/6/63.

Ballard spoke of writing some C&I articles — did he have a hand in writing or subbing this one? While authorship was credited to the laboratory’s then director, Sir William Glanville, Ballard would certainly have seen the article, as there is one of his less-interesting book reviews in the same issue. Was the young Ballard given the perk of a trip out to Crowthorne to see the Road Research Laboratory for himself? Only a few miles west of London, it would not have been out of his way.

With its Observation Towers, Underground Laboratory, Gatehouse, Control Building, banked bend and even a ‘Terminal Area’, the test track at Crowthorne is a gloriously Ballardian territory:

Taken from the C&I article on Road Research Laboratory, 1/6/63.

And the laboratory certainly keeps rearing its head in Ballard’s fiction:

The Impact Zone. At dusk Talbot drove around the deserted circuit of the research laboratory test track. Grass grew waist high through the untended concrete, wheel-less cars rusted in the undergrowth along the verge. Overhead the helicopter moved across the trees, its fans churning up a storm of leaves and cigarette cartons. Talbot steered the car among the broken tyres and oil drums. Beside him the young woman leaned against his shoulder, her grey eyes surveying Talbot with an almost minatory calm. He turned on to a concrete track between the trees. The collision course ran forwards through the dim light, crushed cars shackled to steel gondolas above a catapult. Plastic mannequins spilled through the burst doors and panels. As they walked along the catapult rails Talbot was aware of the young woman pacing out the triangle of approach roads. Her face contained the geometry of the plaza. He worked until dawn, towing the wrecks into the semblance of a motorcade.’

J.G. Ballard. ‘The University of Death’ (ch.2), The Atrocity Exhibition (1970).

Surely Vaughan himself would have attached himself to the ‘team of experts’ in this extract:

Taken from the C&I article on the Road Research Laboratory, 1/6/63.

Through Vaughan I discovered the true significance of the automobile crash, the meaning of whiplash injuries and roll-over, the ecstasies of head-on collisions. Together we visited the Road Research Laboratory twenty miles to the west of London, and watched the calibrated vehicles crashing into the concrete target blocks. Later, in his apartment, Vaughan screened slow-motion films of test collisions that he had photographed with his cinecamera. Sitting in the darkness on the floor cushions, we watched the silent impacts flicker on the wall above our heads. The repeated sequences of crashing cars first calmed and then aroused me. Cruising alone on the motorway under the yellow glare of the sodium lights, I thought of myself at the controls of these impacting vehicles.”

J.G. Ballard, Crash (1973).

Ballard would have had a good excuse to ask for the Crowthorne job — it’s practically on the way home. In this Google map, the upper right blue flag is the C&I offices, the middle flag is Ballard’s home in Shepperton and the upper flag at bottom left is the Road Research Laboratory:

As an interesting aside, what bizarre ley line must exist in Berkshire to have three ‘total institutions’ in a line within a few miles of each other? The three flags on the left are: the Road Research Laboratory, Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane (which also features in Ballard’s work), and Sandhurst Royal Military Academy – all richly Ballardian territories.

But I digress. I hope this article has shed some light on the mass of ‘invisible literature’ and ‘delicious plankton’ that passed before Ballard, the embryonic writer, and helped form the obsessions that were to feed his imagination and stay with him throughout his life. I think the materials and the new journalistic skills that Ballard discovered at C&I gave him an escape route from the impossibility of writing straight SF and suggested new outlets for his burgeoning creativity.

Mike Bonsall, July 2007.

Thanks to Alex and Will Knight, Tim Chapman, Simon Sellars and other members of the JGB Yahoo group for help with research.

..:: REFERENCES
+ Ballard, J.G. (1997), ‘The Pleasures of Reading’ in A User’s Guide to the Millennium.
+ Pringle, D. (ed.) and Ballard, J.G. (1982). ‘From Shanghai to Shepperton’, in RE/Search 8/9: J.G. Ballard (eds. Vale and Andrea Juno). pp. 112-124.

..:: APPENDIX
+ Complete text of Ballard’s book reviews for C&I.

The Atrocity Exhibition is a collection of J.G. Ballard’s most extraordinary short stories. Written in the few years following the tragic death of his wife, they are his most difficult work, representing the extremes of anguish, desire, alienation and horror. Compact and repetitive, they pick over the same questions of psychopathology, sexuality and death in paragraph after paragraph.

In this ‘new work’, Another Atrocity, each paragraph has a heading which may or may not relate to its contents. As the original work is already ‘cut-up’ in some sense, I felt it would be perfect for my electronic cut-up technique, in which each heading and sentence is chosen at random from the complete text.

In doing this, I was also reminded of Borges’ ‘Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote’, in which a modern writer becomes so immersed in Cervantes’ work that he is able to ‘re-write’ it, word-for-word. This is also an attempted ‘recreation’ of Ballard’s work by reproducing it.

I felt the addition of one of Versalius’ brilliant etchings of a dissected man complemented the biomorphic horror of the text, and also reflects Ballard’s (and my own) formative experience in the dissecting room.

And now it is complete, with every click on the refresh button, a unique page of Ballard’s Another Atrocity is created!

>>> Click here for access.

– Mike Bonsall