J. G. Ballard, the British Philip K. Dick. 2 Mini-reviews

[Glenn Armstrong]

High-Rise

"High Rise is about a 40-storey apartment block, and how from innocent beginnings it reduces people to murder, incest and above all a passionate love for chaos. A gripping read, particularly if you like your thrills chilly, bloody and with claims to social relevance." -Time Out London

Millennium People

"Ballard is a British Philip K. Dick, heir to Conrad and H.G. Wells, in whose stories the present, taken to extremes, anticipates the future. In fact, the only complaint to be made of this bruisingly smart novel is that it has taken eight years for it to appear in the U.S." -Publishers Weekly starred review.

p.s. www.writingforums.org looks like a good site for nit-picky, obsessive English major stuff for anyone involved with creative writing. I'm just sayin' . . .   

[Pikini Death Ray]

Thanks I have not read either of these but will check them out. I love some of Ballard's books, Super Cannes & Cocaine nights being two of my favourites. If you have not read Super Cannes check it out. It is the story of a high tech business park and residential complex in the south of France whose executive inhabitants are overworked and have found bizarre ways to unwind and relieve executive stress. It is pretty sinister and in a style that is typically Ballard it presents a slightly distorted/exaggerated version of reality and discusses some of his favourite themes, corruption, greed and a nightmarish near future. Cocaine Nights is a 'sister' novel to this and is about the British expatriate community in Spain. Both good books! Also I can highly recommend Atomised by Michel Houellebecq. I won't go into detail but there are some link to reviews below.

All the best

PKD

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/sep/09/fiction.jgballard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/24/fiction.michelhouellebecq

[Glenn Armstrong]

Cool! I will order these along with The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard. I remember vaguely a Ballard story about forced obsolesence in which products are abandoned after a few months and piled up in mounds (tvs, stereos, etc.) beneath the freeways to rust. Funny cause this guy I know was saying yesterday how he had to get new earbuds every few months. Atomized looks interesting too. Dual nature of man in a pluralistic society perhaps? Let me know of anything else good to read along these lines! I have read Ballard's Crash and Empire of the Sun thusfar . . .
 
Pikini Death Ray said:

Thanks I have not read either of these but will check them out. I love some of Ballard's books, Super Cannes & Cocaine nights being two of my favourites. If you have not read Super Cannes check it out. It is the story of a high tech business park and residential complex in the south of France whose executive inhabitants are overworked and have found bizarre ways to unwind and relieve executive stress. It is pretty sinister and in a style that is typically Ballard it presents a slightly distorted/exaggerated version of reality and discusses some of his favourite themes, corruption, greed and a nightmarish near future. Cocaine Nights is a 'sister' novel to this and is about the British expatriate community in Spain. Both good books! Also I can highly recommend Atomised by Michel Houellebecq. I won't go into detail but there are some link to reviews below.

All the best

PKD

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/sep/09/fiction.jgballard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/24/fiction.michelhouellebecq

[Howie Pyro]

they were my 2 favorite authors (along with wm burroughs & charles g finney, harlan ellison & the late ray bradbury) since high school...glad to see you guys recognizing these geniuses...as far as ballard goes i lean towards the early stuff but i love HELLO AMERICA, which takes place in the future & has weird references like an insane apollo expedition survivor who calls himself President Charles Manson, etc, etc...

[Glenn Armstrong]

 

Hello America sounds interesting. A review said it was for Ballard die-hards. High-Rise was first published in 1975 and is largely about class warfare in a tower block. Millennium People (2003) was Ballard's second to last novel and revolves around terrorism, middle-class angst and identity politics. And the dissolution of society of course. I just plunked down the $$ for The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard so I guess I am on a Ballard jag. I am wondering what music Ballard wrote to, if any. I read Stephen King liked to write to the Ramones. I like to write to repetitive stuff like the Stooges, Funkadelic, or R.L. Burnside, but I ain't nobody. It might be interesting to find out what music certain authors listened to when they wrote. Surf music is good too so I am going to go check out the latest Surfcast now.  

 
Howie Pyro said:

they were my 2 favorite authors (along with wm burroughs & charles g finney, harlan ellison & the late ray bradbury) since high school...glad to see you guys recognizing these geniuses...as far as ballard goes i lean towards the early stuff but i love HELLO AMERICA, which takes place in the future & has weird references like an insane apollo expedition survivor who calls himself President Charles Manson, etc, etc...

[Glenn Armstrong]

 

Just finished Ballard's Hello America. I got it from the public library and I would say, contrary to a review I read, it does measure up to Ballard's other stuff. It goes to show that you can't always trust the reviewers. It is a parable of American decline from an imperial heyday of tailfin cars, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe. The novel also features Ballard's obsession with US Presidents. I read it while listening to Redd Kross' new album Researching the Blues. I bought the LP with free download although it is free on Spotify. What that has to do with J.G. Ballard I don't know but it is a good album.
 
Howie Pyro said:

they were my 2 favorite authors (along with wm burroughs & charles g finney, harlan ellison & the late ray bradbury) since high school...glad to see you guys recognizing these geniuses...as far as ballard goes i lean towards the early stuff but i love HELLO AMERICA, which takes place in the future & has weird references like an insane apollo expedition survivor who calls himself President Charles Manson, etc, etc...

[The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies]

Ballard's "The Kindness of Women" is one of my favourites........It's a sort if.....very SORT OF.... sequel to "Empire of The Sun"....although they overlap a lot.......

[Glenn Armstrong]

 

I put The Kindness of Women on hold at the library along with Super-cannes. It had good reviews although I would probably trust the opinion of someone on The Bookshelf more than a reviewer with an agenda. I have decided that I am more of an aficionado than a reviewer. If I like an author I cannot bear to slash and burn his work just to elevate myself. Honest criticism is another thing. I am looking forward to reading more Ballard . . .
 
The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies said:

Ballard's "The Kindness of Women" is one of my favourites........It's a sort if.....very SORT OF.... sequel to "Empire of The Sun"....although they overlap a lot.......

[The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies]

Hope you enjoy it!......I have to say that I love both Ballard and Dick.....They are both great......A bit ironically, as i read Ballard because he was considered Sci Fi, I think I like his non Sci Fi stuff best...."Empire of The Sun" and "Kindness Of Women" are a couple of the best books I have ever read......

Have you read Dick's "The Ganymede Takeover"?......its a bit more "Pulp" than some of his stuff, but I really like it......

Glenn Armstrong said:

 

I put The Kindness of Women on hold at the library along with Super-cannes. It had good reviews although I would probably trust the opinion of someone on The Bookshelf more than a reviewer with an agenda. I have decided that I am more of an aficionado than a reviewer. If I like an author I cannot bear to slash and burn his work just to elevate myself. Honest criticism is another thing. I am looking forward to reading more Ballard . . .
 
The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies said:

Ballard's "The Kindness of Women" is one of my favourites........It's a sort if.....very SORT OF.... sequel to "Empire of The Sun"....although they overlap a lot.......

[Glenn Armstrong]

The Ganymede Takeover is one of the few PKD sci-fi books I haven't read, probably because it does not appear to be a Vintage paperback. I had to order it, for 8 bucks you can't go wrong. Interesting that one of the characters is a Black Muslim as I read that one of PKD's wives ran off with a Black Panther. Just recommeded Dr. Bloodmoney to a friend who sent me an e-mail referencing the image of an astronaut floating forever in space. Though I think that Ballard is really his own genre of speculative fiction at times, and not just a British PKD. 
 
The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies said:

Hope you enjoy it!......I have to say that I love both Ballard and Dick.....They are both great......A bit ironically, as i read Ballard because he was considered Sci Fi, I think I like his non Sci Fi stuff best...."Empire of The Sun" and "Kindness Of Women" are a couple of the best books I have ever read......

Have you read Dick's "The Ganymede Takeover"?......its a bit more "Pulp" than some of his stuff, but I really like it......

Glenn Armstrong said:

 

I put The Kindness of Women on hold at the library along with Super-cannes. It had good reviews although I would probably trust the opinion of someone on The Bookshelf more than a reviewer with an agenda. I have decided that I am more of an aficionado than a reviewer. If I like an author I cannot bear to slash and burn his work just to elevate myself. Honest criticism is another thing. I am looking forward to reading more Ballard . . .
 
The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies said:

Ballard's "The Kindness of Women" is one of my favourites........It's a sort if.....very SORT OF.... sequel to "Empire of The Sun"....although they overlap a lot.......

[dave]

Hi everyone,

I just found this entry, so I'll come back later, but now I'll leave 2 links:

Why I want to fuck J. G. Ballard (title is a play on a short story)

pdf for The Complete Short Stories of JG Ballard

Glad so many people here love Ballard!

[dave]

Super Cannes, Cocaine Nights, and The Kindness of Women sound right up my alley, I'm a sci-fi fan who is starting to find the current world more science-fictional than anything that I can find lately.

Speaking a non-SF books by 'Sci-Fi' authors, have any of you read Anthony Burgess' The Piano Players? Read it aboot 20 years ago and quite enjoyed it. It's the 'memoir' of and old woman and the link that she has to her grandson.

My favorite Ballard books are High Rise, Concrete Island (auto accident, and how the survivor reacts), Vermillion Sands (loosely connected short stories about a community).

The Crystal World (a virus is turning everything in the world into a crystalline substance, it's a bit Heart of Darkness-y) and Crash weren't bad, but for some reason they didn't have as hard an impact upon my mind.

Ballard is like PK Dick for me, a little goes a long way, so after my initial exposure to them I only read them every 5 or 10 years. Potent, often depressing stuff. When I read Blade Runner I was 20, and it bummed me out for 3 months, whew!

But there's no doubt that both writers are unique visionaries, no-one else comes close.

[dave]

Jacob Appelbaum @ioerror

"I often wonder if J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick predicted our present or if they accidentally wrote handbooks that helped to create it."