Ballardian: the World of J.G. Ballard

OPENING LINE:
“Soon it would be too hot.”

From Amazon UK:

In the 21st century, fluctuations in solar radiation have caused the ice-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilization has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition travels to record the flora and fauna of this new Triassic Age. This early novel by the author of CRASH and EMPIRE OF THE SUN is at once a fast paced narrative, a stunning evocation of a flooded, tropical London of the near future and a speculative foray into the workings of the unconscious mind.”

On the back of my 1974 Penguin edition, there’s no blurb, simply this:

Ballard is one of the brightest new stars in post-war fiction. This tale of strange and terrible adventures in a world of steaming jungles has an oppressive power reminiscent of Conrad (Kingsley Amis).”

The Drowned World’s relevance endures, as Umberto Rossi demonstrates with his comparison of urban landscapes in Drowned and Hello America:

J.G. Ballard has dealt at least twice with the apocalyptic image of the Dead City. This somewhat disturbing landscape is the background of his novels The Drowned World and Hello America. The two mark different points on the axis of time—namely, 1962 and 1979, respectively—cutting a segment on the line of Ballard’s evolution as a writer, but also defining a period of literary history during which many significant events took place, both inside and outside SF. Between 1962 and 1979 Ballard wrote important works such as The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and The Crystal World; SF literature “came of age” thanks to P.K. Dick, K.W. Jeter, Thomas Disch, Ursula Le Guin, and Brian Aldiss; and, as for North American literature, the postmodernist wave reached its zenith.”

On the other side of the coin, Justina Robinson takes Ballard to task for those old bugbears: characters as cyphers, and stylisation over emotion…

…stylisation continues throughout all the personal action in the book; a kind of old code, which to my modern eyes seems almost quaintly peculiar… A final criticism would be that the characters are all too much like ciphers acting out symbolic roles, and not sufficiently humanised to ring entirely true. Their remove from the reader and from each other, finally makes the entire story seem as though it’s been viewed through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.”

Although she does end with this:

As a whole…this book deserves its place on the masterworks’ shelf and in the history of SF and literature. It shows, even from thirty-seven years ago, that artistic and literary aspirations could be brought together with SF ideas in a seamless whole…it’s worth reading for the sheer pleasure that the scenes of opulence and decay can provide, and in the wonder of the drowned world images that Ballard was able to completely master.”

..:: J.G. BALLARD
• Bibliography
• Filmography (coming soon)
• Artography (coming soon)

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