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Archive for the ‘enviro-disaster’ Category

Munich Round-Up: Interview with J.G. Ballard

By Dan O'Hara • Mar 15th, 2008 •

Category: Germany, WWII, archival, biology, deep time, entropy, enviro-disaster, inner space, science fiction, surrealism

Dan O’Hara has re-translated three interviews with JGB, originally published in German in the 60s, in which Ballard provides absorbing insight into his enviro-disaster trilogy: The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World.



‘My name is Maitland, Donald Maitland…’

By Simon Sellars • Feb 9th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster

Was Ballard influenced by Ian Fleming at the onset of his career? Or was there a sparkle of satirical intent in the author’s eye?



J.G Ballard: The Visual Tribute, Part 2

By Simon Sellars • Dec 30th, 2007 •

Category: entropy, enviro-disaster, short stories, visual art

Here’s a selection of visual art that we’ve previously featured on this site, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work. See Part 1 for more recent discoveries.

Image from ‘Future Ruins’
by Michelle Lord

Inspired by author J.G. Ballard’s literary visions of modernist architectural design and his prophetic views on the technological demise of the […]



J.G. Ballard: The Visual Tribute

By Simon Sellars • Dec 28th, 2007 •

Category: Australia, David Cronenberg, Lead Story, entropy, enviro-disaster, features, short stories, visual art

Here’s a selection of visual art I’ve recently come across, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work.



How to Build a Utopia in Your Spare Time

By Simon Sellars • Dec 23rd, 2007 •

Category: Australia, Iain Sinclair, Jean Baudrillard, Lead Story, Pacific, academia, alternate worlds, dystopia, enviro-disaster, film, literature, reviews, science fiction, terrorism, utopia

A review of Demanding the Impossible, the Third Australian Conference on Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction, held at Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 5-7.



BLDGBLOG: Kim Stanley Robinson

By Simon Sellars • Dec 22nd, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, alternate worlds, architecture, enviro-disaster, utopia

Geoff has posted a fabulous interview with monumental SF/utopian author Kim Stanley Robinson over at BLDGBLOG. Robinson responds to Geoff’s fresh perspective…



“A fierce and wayward beauty”: Waste in the Fiction of J.G. Ballard, Part III

By William Viney • Dec 18th, 2007 •

Category: Jean Baudrillard, Lead Story, alternate worlds, architecture, dystopia, entropy, enviro-disaster, speed & violence, urban decay

According to William Viney, Crash presents a barrage of images that expresses collapse, dereliction, and waste; a seemingly endless carnival of sex and destruction; intoxicating, perverting, and desensitizing the reader, while Empire of the Sun can be seen as the terminus of Ballard’s treatment of waste, the epitome of all that has gone before. Although Ballard’s other works deal with the subject of death and the disposal of corpses, Empire of the Sun attempts to cope with this disposal on a mass-scale, or rather, during both war and peace, it explores the complex transition between the valued human being and lifeless, disposable cadaver.



“A fierce and wayward beauty”: Waste in the Fiction of J.G. Ballard, Parts I & II

By William Viney • Dec 11th, 2007 •

Category: Lead Story, alternate worlds, architecture, dystopia, entropy, enviro-disaster, features, speed & violence, urban decay

William Viney explores how High-Rise, Concrete Island, and “The Ultimate City” contain familiar visual landscapes. However, each of these recognisable aspects of urban experience is rendered unfamiliar through the pervasive renegotiation of waste categories.



Drowned Geoff

By Simon Sellars • Nov 17th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, alternate worlds, architecture, celebrity culture, cult-doom peddling, dystopia, enviro-disaster, utopia

Image by Pedro Armestre and Mario Gómez.
The influence of BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh is spreading far and wide, so much so he is now featuring in a personality profile (disguised as a walking tour) in the Los Angeles Times in which the colour of his hair is discussed! Luckily, the writer, architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, leaves […]



Preparing for Disaster

By Simon Sellars • Sep 22nd, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster

Back in July, the always-excellent things magazine reported the existence of ‘The Suburban Emergency Management Project, always on the lookout for some major Ballardian catastrophe’. SEMP’s mission statement is to provide ‘a full spectrum of resources to support any community organization that provides or manages disaster-related services. SEMP publications include Securitas Magazine and Biot Reports […]



Jon Cattapan’s Drowned World

By Simon Sellars • Aug 18th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster, visual art

Image from Jon Cattapan’s Drowned World (courtesy Victorian College of the Arts).
Still in Melbourne, I somehow missed this last year (think I may have been O/S at the time) but it’s worth recording as yet another excellent example of Ballard’s spreading influence in the visual arts.
There’s one apparent error, though — as far as […]



Hello Mr Rae

By Simon Sellars • Jul 29th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Shepperton, enviro-disaster

Stunning floods in England, of course; big, big news. And, as Blood & Treasure reports:
Life imitates Ballard, forces him out of own house:
‘In 1962 JG Ballard wrote The Drowned World, a fictional account of a flooded London, “a garbage filled swamp”. This week London has been under flood alert, with the water full of human […]



Ballardosphere Wrap-Up, Part 5

By Simon Sellars • May 27th, 2007 •

Category: Australia, Ballardosphere, Salvador Dali, academia, architecture, enviro-disaster, fascism, film, surrealism, visual art

Here I present the latest wrapup, not as extensive as I would like as I’m currently in Dubai trying to locate my missing passport, while entertaining the thought of spending a few days, maybe a week in the non-space of the Dubai International Airport until it turns up (hopefully a week; I’m trying to embrace […]



Archaeological Finds

By Simon Sellars • May 22nd, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Shepperton, alternate worlds, architecture, dystopia, enviro-disaster, inner space, urban decay, urban ruins

Self-portrait: next to the M3 in Shepperton (photo: Simon Sellars).
Apologies for the down time this site has experienced since the Ballard conference. I’m still in England where I’ve experienced many Ballardian and sub-Ballardian moments (and even some non-Ballardian moments, would you Adam and Eve it?) including exchanging views on ‘torture porn’ with Rick Poynor against […]



Disaster Prone

By Simon Sellars • Apr 26th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster, television, urban ruins

Here’s an excerpt from the BBC documentary, The Martians and Us, focusing on J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World. It features Ballard cheer from Brian Aldiss, Christopher Priest, Will Self, Roger Luckhurst, Brian Stableford and John Sutherland.
[ thanks, Pedro ]



Drowned Shepperton

By Simon Sellars • Feb 19th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Shepperton, enviro-disaster, suburbia, urban decay

Check out these flood maps — dynamic maps predicting sea-level rise around the globe (found via Dissensus).
First, adjust the rising sea level to +14m.
Then focus on London.
Now zoom into Shepperton.
Result: a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Shepperton-based author of The Drowned World.



The Drought: Water Vigilantes

By Simon Sellars • Feb 7th, 2007 •

Category: Australia, Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster, urban revolt

Beware the water cops (photo: Sandy Scheltema; courtesy Age newspaper)
Here in Victoria we’re undergoing a severe drought; heavy water restrictions are in force and things are projected to get much worse.
A sign of the times is the appearance of “water vigilantes”, as reported in the Age newspaper:
MARGARET Norriss is living in fear. The retired teacher […]



The Wind From Nowhere (1961)

By Simon Sellars • Oct 10th, 2006 •

Category: bibliography, enviro-disaster, urban decay

OPENING LINE:
“The dust came first.”
From the Penguin edition, 1976:
The wind came from nowhere … a super-hurricane that blasted round the globe at hundreds of miles per hour burying whole communities beneath piles of rubble, destroying all organized life and driving those it did not kill to seek safety in tunnels and sewers – […]



The Drowned World (1962)

By Simon Sellars • Oct 10th, 2006 •

Category: bibliography, deep time, enviro-disaster, inner space, urban decay

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 […]



The Burning World (aka The Drought; 1964)

By Simon Sellars • Oct 8th, 2006 •

Category: bibliography, deep time, enviro-disaster, urban decay

OPENING LINE:
“At noon, when Dr Charles Ransom moored his houseboat in the entrance to the river, he saw Quilter, the idiot son of the old woman who lived in the ramshackle barge outside the yacht basin, standing on a spur of exposed rock on the opposite bank and smiling at the dead birds floating in […]



Politics of Catastrophe

By Simon Sellars • Sep 7th, 2006 •

Category: Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster

I came across a tantalising abstract for an article by Matthew Gandy from a journal called Space and Culture. Apparently the article, “J. G. Ballard and the Politics of Catastrophe”, states that “J. G. Ballard’s fictional depiction of a future London under water bears a striking similarity with the actual experience of New Orleans. In […]



Rushing to Paradise (1994)

By Simon Sellars • Sep 7th, 2006 •

Category: bibliography, enviro-disaster

OPENING LINE:
” ‘Save the albatross! Stop nuclear testing now!’ “.
From the 1994 Picador edition:
Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists wins control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their […]



A User’s Guide to the Millennium (1996)

By Simon Sellars • Sep 5th, 2006 •

Category: Salvador Dali, WWII, William Burroughs, advertising, architecture, bibliography, boredom, celebrity culture, consumerism, death of affect, deep time, dystopia, enviro-disaster, fashion, film, flying, humour, invisible literature, media landscape, medical procedure, non-fiction, photography, politics, psychogeography, psychology, science fiction, sexual politics, space relics, speed & violence, surrealism, television, urban decay, visual art

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 […]



J.G. Ballard: The Complete Short Stories, vols 1 & 2 (2006)

By Simon Sellars • Sep 1st, 2006 •

Category: New Worlds, Shepperton, WWII, advertising, architecture, bibliography, boredom, celebrity culture, consumerism, death of affect, deep time, dystopia, enviro-disaster, flying, humour, invisible literature, media landscape, medical procedure, photography, politics, psychogeography, psychology, science fiction, sexual politics, short stories, space relics, speed & violence, suicide, surrealism, television, terrorism, urban decay, urban revolt, visual art

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; […]



BLDGBLOG & Davis, Part 2

By Simon Sellars • May 25th, 2006 •

Category: Ballardosphere, architecture, enviro-disaster, terrorism, urban decay

Geoff has posted Part 2 of his Mike Davis interview over at BLDGBLOG, with suitably Ballardian and peripheral topics:
“In this instalment, Davis discusses the rise of Pentecostalism in global mega-slums; the threat of avian flu; the disease vectors of urban poverty; criminal and terrorist mini-states; the future of sovereignty; environmental footprints; William Gibson; the allure […]



‘Child of the Diaspora’: Sterling on Ballard

By Chris • Oct 7th, 2005 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Bruce Sterling, Shepperton, William Burroughs, cyberpunk, enviro-disaster, flying, interviews, invisible literature, medical procedure, science fiction, sexual politics, urban decay

Bruce Sterling is a prolific science-fiction writer, futurist, social critic and design professor, best known for his bestselling novels and seminal short fiction, and as the editor of the Mirrorshades anthology that defined the ‘cyberpunk’ subgenre. His nonfiction includes works of futurism such as Tomorrow Now; a regular column and blog for Wired; and his […]