Ballardian

This is the foreword to the Greek edition of Ballard’s Miracles of Life, to be published by Oxy in November 2009.

“As Michael Jackson reached middle age, the skin of both his cheeks and neck tended to sag from failure of the supporting structures. His naso-labial folds deepened, and the soft tissues along his jaw fell forward. His jowls tended to increase. In profile the creases of his neck lengthened and the chin-neck contour lost its youthful outline and became convex.”

Ballard on horror fiction: ‘There are sudden glimpses of the shocking and unspeakable in my fiction too, so there is a certain overlap’.

Stunning news — a new book from JGB in the works: ‘Outline for a new book, working title Conversations with My Physician. The physician in question is oncologist Professor Jonathan Waxman of Imperial College, London, who is treating Ballard for prostate cancer. While it is in part a book about cancer, and Ballard’s struggle with it, it moves on to broader themes — indeed, the subtitle is The Meaning, if Any, of Life.’

Rick McGrath interviews Solveig Nordlund about her feature film, Aparelho Voador a Baixa Altitude (2002). Based on JGB’s short story, ‘Low-Flying Aircraft’, it’s arguably the best Ballard adaptation of them all, although it has rarely been shown outside Portugal. Included with the interview are clips from the film as well as from Solveig’s previous Ballard adaptation, ‘Journey to Orion’ (based on ‘Thirteen to Centaurus’).

Jamie Sherry reviews a unique on-screen adaptation of Ballard’s work, now showing on BallardoTube: the Italian animation, Grande Anarca, based on JGB’s 1985 short story, ‘Answers to A Questionnaire’. Can the filmmakers succeed where other, big-name suitors have failed — decanting Ballard’s experimental literary narratives into a more linear cinematic language? Or does Ballard resist classification yet again?

Transmission from Barcelona stop Having a wonderful time stop I believe in nothing stop Lost in surreal image machine and deep-blue-drenched corridors stretching to infinity stop Startling comma perverse visuals stop Rare books and writing stop Exhibition a raging success stop JGB would be proud stop Full letter to follow comma Love Rick end transmission

Jordi Costa, the curator of J.G. Ballard: Autopsy of the New Millennium, currently exhibiting at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, gifts us this incisive analysis of the major themes in Ballard’s work. Accompanying the essay is the alternate version of the exhibition’s promo trailer.

Wim Delvoye’s ‘Kiss’ series of x-ray art echoes The Atrocity Exhibition and the illustrations of Phoebe Gloeckner. WARNING: this post is indisputably unsafe for work. No, seriously: you have been warned.

Over at Barnes & Noble, SF writer Paul Di Filippo tries to get America interested in Ballard.

In 1991 Simon Brook made a short film from J.G. Ballard’s obscure 1963 short story, ‘Minus One’. Enjoy this super-rare screening of Simon’s film.

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 [...]

OPENING LINE: “Apocalypse. A disquieting feature of this annual exhibition — to which the patients themselves were not invited — was the marked preoccupation of the paintings with the theme of world cataclysm, as if these long-incarcerated patients had sensed some seismic upheaval within the minds of their doctors and nurses.” For many, The Atrocity [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Thanks to TimC for pointing me towards this very positive review of Weiss’s Atrocity Exhibition film, published in Sight & Sound. Interestingly, the fellow who wrote that review, Tim Lucas, also wrote a novel called Throat Sprockets (1994), which was described thusly: “The focused description of scenes, of the medical exactness of throat architecture recalls [...]

The Atrocity Exhibition is a collection of J.G. Ballard’s most extraordinary short stories. Written in the few years following the tragic death of his wife, they are his most difficult work, representing the extremes of anguish, desire, alienation and horror. Compact and repetitive, they pick over the same questions of psychopathology, sexuality and death in [...]

What we’ve hinted at on Ballardian (ie JG Ballard’s Enlargement Phalloplasty; Why I Want to fuck John Howard), some people have ‘examined’ (ooh, err…nurse!) in a…ahem….’full frontal’ (ooh, vicar!) no-holds barred fashion. I picked up from our stats that a site called Fetish Fish has linked to our Bruce Sterling/JG Ballard interview in a piece [...]

An excerpt from Peter Carty’s Ballard-referencing review of an interesting-sounding novel… “An Everyman’s life history doomed to repeat itself as farce” Remainder, By Tom McCarthy Published: 12 December 2005 “Re-enactment has been a feature in recent art, most famously in Jeremy Deller’s reprise of the Orgreave battle between striking miners and police. It is a [...]

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What might have happened if J.G. Ballard had used his medical training to its fullest potential and become a doctor rather than a writer? Well, there would be no pen name for a start; ‘Jimmy Ballard’ would be a different man indeed, as Johnny Strike discovers. In this fascinating snapshot into an alternate Ballardian universe, [...]

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/brad/medill/pernkopf.html The History of Eduard Pernkopf’s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen by David J. Williams “Frequently misunderstood because of the history of the time in which it was produced, Eduard Pernkopf’s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen nevertheless represents the pinnacle of color anatomic illustration. The more than 800 magnificent watercolor paintings of human anatomy found in Pernkopf’s [...]

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 [...]

by Kristoph Eggleston J.G. Ballard photo courtesy of Steve Double This is a work of fiction concerning one of the 20th-century’s more controversial writers, J.G. Ballard. It utilises the method Ballard himself employed as part of a short piece in the RE/Search reprint of his Atrocity Exhibition collection. In that piece, “Mae West’s Reduction Mammoplasty”, [...]