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▲The Illuminated Man: an unconventional portrait of JG Ballardself.__VINEXT_RSC_CHUNKS__=self.__VINEXT_RSC_CHUNKS__||[];self.__VINEXT_RSC_CHUNKS__.push("2:I[\"aadde9aaef29\",[],\"default\",1]\n3:I[\"6e873226e03b\",[],\"Children\",1]\n5:I[\"bc2946a341c8\",[],\"LayoutSegmentProvider\",1]\n6:I[\"6e873226e03b\",[],\"Slot\",1]\n7:I[\"3506b3d116f7\",[],\"ErrorBoundary\",1]\n8:I[\"a9bbde40cf2d\",[],\"default\",1]\n9:I[\"3506b3d116f7\",[],\"NotFoundBoundary\",1]\na:\"$Sreact.suspense\"\n:HL[\"/assets/index-BLEkI_5r.css\",\"style\"]\n")n class="_source_ka9gd_36"> (theguardian.com)

66 points by agronaut 6 days ago | 21 comments

ecliptik 6 days ago [-]

One of my favorite authors and highly recommend his short stories [1] and the "ambiguous apocalypse" trilogy - The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World.

As one of collections intros said, Ballard is science fiction, but Inner Space, not Outer Space.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Short_Stories_of_...

vidarh 5 days ago [-]

It's perhaps fitting that Christopher Priest, one of the biographers, is the author of Inverted World, that might well fit in the "inner space" genre.

atombender 6 days ago [-]

I absolutely loved The Crystal World. It's a unique, weird fever dream of a novel. I still find myself thinking about it at random times, even while being unsure if the book really makes sense.

The Burning World is rarely talked about. How is it?

FpUser 6 days ago [-]

>"The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World" - same here, my favorites

ggm 6 days ago c9_14">[-]

Always tempting to say the dehumanising influences of his childhood informed his writing but I think that's unfair to his own sensibility and idea of modern creative writing.

He had a very eventful life. Across very eventful times.

I think the short stories work better than most of the longform although "the wind from nowhere" and "empire of the sun are very good".

I also think it's useful to remember he wasn't writing in a vacuum, British SF was exploring all kinds of forms, Michael Moorcock wrote deconstructed novels where chapter readings before flow text carried a whole emotional plane not exposed in the plot (the condition of muzak) and Brian Aldiss expored SF literary criticism taking the genre seriously for almost the first time. He was a writer in a context of exploratory writing.

pnw 6 days ago [-]

It seems like the best authors - JG Ballard in this instance - are somehow resistant to modern biographers. Even the least worst Phillip K Dick biography (Divine Invasions) is over 30 years old!

nickdothutton 6 days ago [-]

A favourite of mine. Do please check the interviews with him on youtube. Some authors try to show you the far future, he tried to show us the next 15 minutes.

thinkingemote 5 days ago [-]

Love his work. Many of Ballards books seem to be like Heart of Darkness but from the point of view of Kurtz.

But going beyond "going native" as a response to modern life towards in a more integrated or conscious way. Going forwards to a weird future of new behaviour rather than backwards to savagery.

antirez 6 days ago [-]

Loved High rise, Concrete island, Empire of the sun. Also make sure to read this: https://www.jgballard.ca/uncollected_work/what_i_believe.htm...

Lio 6 days ago [-]

I really enjoyed some of his later books too. Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes are great.

Like a lot of his books they seem simple until you dig into them. They fry my brain a bit but that’s surrealism for you.

Will Self has some good writing about Ballard.

Finnucane 6 days ago [-]

I was the editor who published Super Cannes in the US. It still makes my day to see it mentioned.

AbbeFaria 5 days ago [-]

I loved High rise and Concrete Island. He was prescient about what modern and current day society looks like.

I will give his other works a read. I tried reading Crash multiple times but it was a bit too gory for me.

languagehacker 6 days ago [-]

I absolutely love JG Ballard. Crash is a classic, and High Rise is a fun one.

dbcooper 6 days ago [-]

"The 60 Minute Zoom" is a good short story to start with.

fallinditch 6 days ago [-]

I thought I was broad-minded enough to read Crash - I wasn't. I did enjoy other Ballard books.

hermitcrab 6 days ago [-]

'The Atrocity Exhibition' is even weirder. I didn't get it at all. Enjoyed most of his other work though.

ghaff 6 days ago [-]

A lot of Ballard was pretty weird. I liked much of his work but "world-destroying" contemporaries like Wyndham were more approachable in general.

MaysonL 6 days ago [-]

Note that the title is probably an allusion to Ray Bradbury’s collection “The Illustrated Man”.

mrsvanwinkle 4 days ago [-]

JG Ballard's Crash led to Baudrillard's brand of Postmodernism (Hyperreality/Simulacra entering pop culture especially with The Matrix) and iirc Ballard was weirded out by Baudrillard's analysis of Crash (which, you know, is saying something when Crash is car crash erotica). Wikipedia claims Nabokov's The Eye+Despair to be the proto/first "postmodern" novel that led to Pale Fire that led to works like Pynchon's V and Wallace's Infinite Jest and Danielewski's House of Leaves etc. though those mainly apply Postmodernism to form, whereas Crash questions the nature (i.e. natural/"original"/"correct") of biological arousal when the object is a literal car crash.

andrehacker 6 days ago [-]

Am I the only one that misread the title and expected to see something about the reclusive Bellard ?

myth2018 6 days ago [-]

No, you're not. Same here.

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