“Extreme Possibilities”: Mapping “the sea of time and space” in J.G. Ballard’s Pacific fictions
By Simon Sellars • Aug 23rd, 2009 •
Category: Japan, Lead Story, Pacific, Shanghai, WWII, academia, alternate worlds, features, inner space, memory, micronations, nuclear war, war
What’s the connection between J.G. Ballard, Hakim Bey and Fredric Jameson? Tracking Ballard’s surreal visions of nuclear conflict to Ground Zero in the Pacific, the paper maps his peculiar, irradiated sense of “affirmative dystopias”, a template for his more enduring urban works (famously, Crash) that, finally, intersects in striking ways with the writings of Bey and Jameson.
