Archive for the ‘literature’ Category
By
Simon Sellars •
Apr 23rd, 2008 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, invisible literature, literature
CrashTest magazine presents Atroxhity: “15 Visual Poets’ tribute to Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition“.
By
Simon Sellars •
Jan 23rd, 2008 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, literature, science fiction
I had to smile when I read this from Wired’s Clive Thompson [via Boing Boing]:
If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas. From where I sit, traditional […]
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.
By
Simon Sellars •
Aug 18th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, audio, literature
LEFT: Johnny in his Crime days (1977; photo by James Stark).
Johnny Strike, lead vocalist and guitarist with original San Fran punk legends Crime, has just released a new collection of short stories published by Rudos and Rubes. Entitled A Loud Humming Sound Came from Above, it features ‘Jimmy Ballard’s Hospital Review’, first published here on […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Jul 29th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Chris Petit, celebrity culture, literature, speed & violence
More on the Dead Di meme, as Chris Petit reviews 12:23 by Eoin McNamee and The Accident Man by Tom Cain:
The princess, as a largely self-invented figure, is a gift to fiction, not least because the reasons she might have been killed are finally less arresting than speculation on her untimely death: the swansong of […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Jul 29th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk, literature, science fiction
Pedro writes:
The canon of “Slipstream literature,” defined by a panel at Readercon has been posted by Paul DiFilippo. JGB is mentioned (Complete Stories as part of the “core canon” at number 10 and Empire of the Sun at 99). Kindness of Women was also suggested by one of the participants.
Here is a response by Paul […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Jul 20th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, archival, literature, media landscape, science fiction
Image from Corridor #5, in which this interview appeared.
Recently, my friend Keith emailed to tell me he’d come across a rare Ballard interview from 1974. It was published in Corridor, a small-press magazine that has been described as ‘a cheaper, thinner, New Worlds [featuring] many of the same authors’.
Corridor was the first partnership […]
By
Mike Holliday •
Jul 9th, 2007 •
Category:
Brian Eno, Iain Sinclair, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, Shepperton, Steven Spielberg, William Burroughs, audio, film, interviews, literature
Michael Moorcock, J.G. Ballard and JGB’s partner Claire Walsh in September, 2006 (photo courtesy Linda Moorcock).
————————————————
Interview by Mike Holliday
————————————————
Michael Moorcock has been a prolific writer and editor for the last five decades. Born in London, he was editing his first magazine by the age of seventeen, and started writing genre fiction professionally as soon as […]
By
Simon Sellars •
May 10th, 2007 •
Category:
Brian Eno, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, academia, alternate worlds, architecture, gated communities, literature, reviews
The UEA Studio: Conference Headquarters (photo: Simon Sellars).
I attended From Shanghai to Shepperton: An International Conference on J.G. Ballard at the University of East Anglia on the weekend, and I’m suffering a bit of a comedown. I always get a bit melancholy when these temporary autonomous zones collapse and everyone returns to virtual communication. Especially […]
By
Gwyn Richards & Simon Sellars •
May 2nd, 2007 •
Category:
Australia, Toby Litt, consumerism, interviews, invisible literature, literature, medical procedure, suburbia
Interview by Gwyn Richards & Simon Sellars
Toby Litt is an English novelist who published his first book, Adventures in Capitalism (a volume of short stories), in 1996, when he was 28. He’s since won praise for the dark inventiveness of his writing, a combination of cinematic prose, apocalyptic imagery and sharp wit that freely […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Feb 24th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, celebrity culture, literature
The Guardian has sparked off an unholy war:
When the Guardian referred to Martin Amis as ‘Britain’s greatest living author’ last week, one reader was so outraged she threatened to emigrate - or worse. So if not Amis, who? Stephen Moss assesses the field.”
[ via Ben Austwick ]
Again, Ballard doesn’t make the cut. But wait. In […]