Ballardian: the World of J.G. Ballard

A man is trapped in an elevator for 41 hours, steadily losing his mind. But to you, he’s just another bug crawling around on a security-camera lens. What do you do?

The Times has two more extracts from Miracles of Life. In the first, Ballard reminisces about his time as a trainee air force pilot. In the second, he discusses the ideas behind Crash.

Annoyed with myself, I set off along the narrow street, past the surveillance cameras that guarded the lacquered doorways, each lens with its own story to tell. Hidden perspectives turned Estrella de Mar into a huge riddle. Trompe-l’oeil corridors beckoned but led nowhere…
J.G. Ballard. Cocaine Nights (1996).
Every good Ballardian needs this: SurveillanceSaver, a screensaver that […]

Photo: Eamonn McCabe.
Lee Rourke at the Guardian’s book blog has posted on Ballard, casting his vote for JGB as Britain’s ‘greatest living author’ and Crash as the ‘most prophetic novel written by a British writer in the last 50 years’.
Lee has some sharp observations:
Crash is the definitive novel of technocentrism: where the blurring of […]

Paul emails to tell me of this news item:
The European Space Agency (Esa) is after volunteers for a simulated human trip to Mars, in which six crewmembers spend 17 months in an isolation tank. They will live and work in a series of interlocked modules at a research institute in Moscow.
Once the hatches […]

by Simon Sellars

Suburban Badlands: the Mill Park aftermath. Photo: Angela Wylie (from the Age newspaper).
The system is self-regulating. It relies on our sense of civic responsibility. Without that, society would collapse. In fact, the collapse may even have begun.”
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J.G. Ballard. Millennium People (2003; p. 104).
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On the morning of 2 January 2007, Melbourne woke to disturbing […]

Interview by Simon Sellars
Rick McGrath is a writer and former adman (which explains the pithy insights to come). He’s also the curator of what may be the world’s largest collection of J.G. Ballard first editions; he’s the ‘go-to man’ whenever a TV station or glossy mag does a rare feature on Ballard and needs […]

by Simon Sellars

Photo by Emiliano Granado. Used with permission.
Geoff Manaugh is a writer and essayist whose work has appeared in Contemporary, Space & Culture, Blend, Lumpen, Inhabitat, WorldChanging, the Oyster Boy Review, the Urban Design Review, Subtopia, Vector, things magazine, and The Allen Ginsberg Audio Collection (a short essay in the CD liner notes). He’s […]

OPENING LINE:
“In his prime the Hollywood screenwriter was one of the tragic figures of our age, evoking the special anguish that arises from feeling sorry for oneself while making large amounts of money”. (from ‘The Sweet Smell of Excess’).
From the 1996 Harper Collins edition:
The first-ever collection of J.G. Ballard’s articles and reviews, published over the […]

OPENING LINE:
“I first met Jane Ciracylides during the Recess, that world slump of boredom, lethargy and high summer which carried us all so blissfully through ten unforgettable years, and I suppose that may have had a lot to do with what went on between us.” (from ‘Prima Belladonna’).
From the 2001 Flamingo edition (originally one volume; […]

Leonard Pierce participates in Coudal Partners’ Field-Tested Books project, “our version of the Heisenberg principle: reading a certain book in a certain place uniquely affects a person’s experience with both. The writing you’ll find here is grounded in that idea. You won’t find any book reviews here. You’ll find reviews of experience”.
Leonard’s […]

A series of Photos from the scene of February 2005’s riots.

From the Glasgow Herald…
Boredom’s not all bad Phil Miller  
Review of A Philosophy of Boredom, Lars Svendsen, Reaktion Books, £14.95
‘ "Boredom is life’s own gravity" is a wonderful conclusion. Also one that is entirely fitting for this amusing, learned, and articulate philosophical study of one of humanity’s prime afflictions. … […]