[HN Gopher] JG Ballard's Apocalyptic Art
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JG Ballard's Apocalyptic Art
Author : thinkingemote
Score : 86 points
Date : 2024-09-13 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newstatesman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newstatesman.com)
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| As someone exposed to some undergraduate 'social science', this
| is one of the funniest things I've ever read
| http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003268.html
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I don't know many (or any) sociology departments teaching CCRU
| related authors
| ghaff wrote:
| Ballard was definitely part of the British gentle apocalypse
| school. Se also Wyndham etc. He also had a lot of other science
| fiction and experimental work in addition to Empire of the Sun.
| jhbadger wrote:
| For some value of "gentle". Typically people mean by that
| stories (mostly British in origin) where the apocalypse isn't
| too bad and even a bit of fun. I don't think the characters in
| _The Drowned World_ , _The Burning World_ , etc. are having a
| fun time.
| ghaff wrote:
| I forget where I took that term from. Certainly some of the
| stories from that era are darker than others.
| twic wrote:
| I think you're thinking of Brian Aldiss's term "cosy
| catastrophe": https://sf-
| encyclopedia.com/entry/cosy_catastrophe
| 0x69420 wrote:
| kingdom come, the last book written before his death, at once
| falls tremendously short of his reputation for prescience on the
| literal level, but exceeds with flying colours in prescience on
| the metaphorical level. the median-age HN reader would probably
| do well to start with it, as its zeitgeist will still be kicking
| around somewhere in your memory and so it will be in some sense
| maximally relatable of his bibliography. then work backwards to
| taste.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'd actually recommend picking and choosing a number of his
| short stories. Quite a number are pretty experimental but lots
| of good ones.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| Good call. Personally I point people towards High-Rise which is
| an older book but has the benefit of being made into a pretty
| good relatively recent movie staring Tom Hiddleston. US
| perspective here, but it seems prescient in a weird Ballardian
| way as well w/ what may or may not be happening (who can tell
| unless it happens to you anymore) in Denver:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-law-firm-repo...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Rise_(novel)
| jhbadger wrote:
| I didn't like the movie of _High-Rise_ because it changes the
| whole point of the book. In the movie it was conflict between
| the rich and poor people in the apartment tower (basically
| redoing _Snowpiercer_ but in a building). In the book, it was
| clear this was a luxury building. _Everyone_ is wealthy if
| they can afford to live there. The point was that these
| people were so bored with their comfortable lives that they
| started fighting each other for no reason.
| twic wrote:
| I liked the film as a film. You're right that it's not a
| faithful adaptation.
| twic wrote:
| I'd tentatively suggest The Concrete Island. It's not at all
| science-fictional, but it manages to wring a lot of weirdness
| out of a completely pedestrian (if you will) setting. It was
| written in 1974, but I think it works just as well today (just
| imagine his phone got broken in the accident).
| optimalsolver wrote:
| I always recommend his short story "Report On An Unidentified
| Space Station":
|
| https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/roauss.htm
| kleiba wrote:
| Funny - I read "Ballard" and immediated thought this was about
| Fabrice Bellard... been on HN for too long, I guess.
| zen_of_prog wrote:
| Haha, I just heard JG Ballard referenced in a recent podcast
| episode [1]. My first thought was if he was related to Geoffrey
| Ballard [2].
|
| [1] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/philip-ball/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Ballard
| atombender wrote:
| Ballard's fiction is great. I'm partial to the early novels (The
| Crystal World is one of my favourites) and to his short stories.
|
| In his longer works, Ballard's ideas often wore a bit thin. In
| particular, his late novels (Cocaine Nights, etc.) are the
| longest -- beautifully written, sure, but they are essentially
| reskinned versions of his earlier High-Rise and Running Wild,
| where he already perfected the motif of humans in gated
| communities reverting to base, animal, violent behaviour. We
| didn't really need those; he'd already made his point.
|
| I do recommend getting his "The Complete Stories of J. G.
| Ballard" (not to be confused with "The Complete Short Stories of
| J. G. Ballard: Volume 1" and "Volume 2", both of which it
| supercedes). It includes classics such as "The Concentration
| City", "Studio 5, The Stars", "A Question of Re-Entry",
| "Billenium", and "The Garden of Time".
|
| While I've always enjoyed Ballard's coldly satirical perspective
| on modern life (The Atrocity Exhibition maybe being the pinnacle
| of this), I think he's at his best when he gets looser and a bit
| weird. Nature succumbing to strange mutations feature in The
| Drowned World, but The Crystal World is absolutely supercharged
| with hallucinogenic weirdness, a fever dream that turns magical-
| realist in the end. Later novels touch on this man/nature
| dichotomy, but not as strongly as his earlier work, although late
| short stories like "Dream Cargoes" revisit that theme.
| Animats wrote:
| No pictures? What are we supposed to be looking at?
| brudgers wrote:
| The words.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I read quite a lot of Ballard and I found 'The kindness of women'
| provided some interesting context on the various themes of his
| work.
| ggm wrote:
| If you liked "empire of the sun" read his biography because what
| happened to Jim across his life is just as interesting.
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