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The Angle Between Two Worlds
Author: Clem Dorbeck • Aug 9th, 2005 •Category: Ballardosphere, theme parks
Work has already started to turn the 166 acres of the former B52 airbase near Cambridge into the first J.G. Ballard entertainment park of what will become a world wide chain of themed resorts based on the work of the infamous British SF writer.
Expected to open in 2007, Ballard World will be the perfect day trip for stressed out Londoners. Advertised as “Families exploring inner space”, there’s enough going on for every age group; The little ones play hide and seek in an abandoned Shanghai mansion and roam around the inevitable empty swimming pool. Dad fingers the dented side panel of Jayne Mansfield’s crashed 1966 Buick Electra, while mom has a pina colada in a cocktail party that’s permanenently on the brink of
getting out of hand.
Another Ballard resort on the outskirts of Shanghai, expected to open its doors in 2009, will consist of a minute replica of the London suburb Shepperton, with the Heathrow Hilton atrium as an entrance building. Other cities as diverse as Detroit and Rome have shown interest in opening a Ballard Park, possibly due to the relatively little investment needed for turning a derelict highway overpass or abandoned airforce base into a first class authentic theme park,
aimed at the upper middle class Ballard fans and their families.
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Clem Dorbeck
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Newer: JG Ballard Was Not Killed in a Car Crash »
angle between two chinese whispers…
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_sutherland/2007/04/what_the_dickens.html
Not to be outdone, the sardonic fansite, http://www.ballardian.com, announces “Ballard World”. It will, we are told, open in 2008.
“According to our sources,” the site reports, with the straightest of faces: “166 acres of a former B52 airbase near Cambridge are being turned into the first JG Ballard entertainment park.” Little Jims will be able to play in overgrown, empty swimming pools, while Dad caresses “the dented side panel of Jayne Mansfield’s crashed 1966 Buick Electra”, his other hand stuck suspiciously down his trouser front. Mummy, meanwhile, is knocking back pina coladas in a cocktail party that’s going orgy-wards very fast. And, down the line, there’s “Burroughs World”, with rumpus rooms where customers can hang out (literally) and experience the novel pleasures of autoerotic asphyxiation, before joining the mugwumps in the slime pool.
It’s rarely comfortable to go too far into a great writer’s world. But where there’s an honest penny to be made, the tourist guide is always there. According to publicity reports, Dickens World will recreate “a dark, dirty and dank London”. Does that, one has to wonder, mean a stinky London as well?
Look what happened in the mind of the Guardian: Dad’s other hand has gone into his trousers, mom’s party is turned into an orgy.