This is a frightening world so close to our own. A world where one small mistake leads to a world wide drought. A world where communities, lives and loves fall apart. This was the first book that moved me, and I can still smell the salt of those drying oceans. This is Ballard at his best.

The Drought is another apocalyptic novel by futurist author J.G.Ballard. In narrative as spare and dry as the expanding deserts he envisions, Ballard describes an earthwide ecological catastrophe when industrial pollution causes a breakdown of the water cycle. Man and planet parch together. This disruption of the elements is accompanied by bizarre disturbances of the human landscape; old friendships fail while old enmities take sinister new courses; teams of "fishermen", their boats stranded in the dust of former harbors, cast their nets for a new, easier prey. Idiots become prophet kings in this redefined world. While not as vividly drawn as some of Ballard's other works, The Drought is an expertly written book; full of cryptic symbology, poetic flashes, casual violence and "Ballardian" prose. Another five star effort by this under appreciated writer.

The world dies. Ballard ends it with a flood in Drowned World, with wind in Wind from Nowhere and so on. In this book it is a drought. Think for yourself how you would write it. In a few paragraphs Ballard sucks you into his version, peopled with characters strange and as unbelievable as the premise. I know the exact location to shoot the movie of this, and have always cherished a secret dream that one day I'd help make that movie. Now comes Crash - and now millions of otherwise literary Americans will come to know some of JGB's work and some lucky soul with cash will buy the option to my dream. Ah well, the greater good is that JGB may become recognized at last as one of the finest minds in SF, a creator of worlds and a master of psychologies. Please read the book, but please leave the movie rights for me

Not all the pieces here are good, but "garden of time", "Billenium", and the nightmarish tale of urban sprawl in the future, "Build-up", make this a good introduction to Ballard. His stories are better than his novels, so start here.

FYI, this is the original Vietnam-era name of "The Atrocity Exhibition," which remains widely available. The first edition hardback was published in a wonderfully lurid cover consisting, I believe,of a skull, painted in a flower-power motif, set against a background of flames. Suitably enough, I found my first edition in a used book shack in a nameless stripmall somewhere in Orange County. I think I paid $4.95, and was appalled at the asking price

This is a creative and interesting explication of an outstanding author's life and work.

This book is sooooooo cool I'm really intrested in UFOligy anyone who likes it like me should get this book. If you think you know all the stories your probably wrong because it has rare stories as well as well known ones. Anyone intrested in UFOs should get this book!

This magnificent collection of stories was first published in 1971. Although this book frequently shows up on lists of the greatest books of all time in that genre, it is not science fiction so much as a vision of possible forms that the arts could take in the future. It is more futuristic fantasy than science fiction. This volume marked J. G. Ballard's maturation as an author. Before this work, much of his work had been highly inventive but more mainstream science fiction. More specifically, he specialized in novels along the theme "this is the way the world ends." For instance, THE DROWNED WORLD concerns the fate of individuals living in tropical London after the polar ice caps have melted, leaving much of the world underwater. In THE WIND FROM NOWHERE a never-ceasing wind destroys the planet by blowing away all the soil and making agriculture and most other forms of human endeavor impossible.

What makes VERMILLION SANDS is the sheer inventiveness of the world he imagines. It is a cheap, tacky world, not unlike a tawdry Las Vegas or Palm Springs, populated by futuristic artists and cultural has-beens. The art forms that Ballard imagines are brilliant, and feel far more familiar thirty years later than they must have felt to those in the early 1970s. After all, computers and the Internet and digitalization has constantly forced us to rethink the possibilities and forms of art. Ballard describes architecture that responds to the emotional experiences of its inhabitants and imparts some of that feeling back to those entering it. He imagines machines rather than people producing poetry, on long ticker tape like rolls of paper. Plants that sing. Sculptors who work with clouds as their preferred medium. And Ballard manages to meld these strange new arts perfectly into the lives of a rich and fascinating, if also rather sad and tragic, group of characters.

This book is, at the time that I am writing this, out of print. But it has over the years come back in print on a few occasions. I am certain that it will again. It is without question a much more interesting book than many of his that are currently in print, and if there is any justice it will once again be made available. Until then, it is well worth searching out.

While captioned a novel, J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun is very much a true life memoir. In this book (made into a film by Steven Spielberg), Ballard first tells the life of a boy ("Jim") in pre-Pearl Harbor Shanghai, the privileged young son of an English business executive. When the war begins, Jim and his parents are separated, and Jim survives for weeks on his own, living of the food left in his and his neighbors' abandoned mansions. Most of the book is set in the Lunghua prison camp, where Jim is forced to grow up under circumstances no boy should endure. Finally, the war ends, and he is reunited with his parents under the shadow of nascent Chinese communism. Ballard tells a compelling story, and pulls no punches. Much of what Jim experiences is shocking, and Ballard neither embellishes nor understates Jim's experiences. Flies, death, and decomposition are everywhere, as are avarice and (occasionally) kindness. This is a very different "coming of age" story, but one I thing a high-schooler would enjoy. (Query: Ballard assumes from his reader a fairly good grounding in World War II and cold war history, which I have. I understand that many young people lack such knowledge. Would such young people understand and appreciate Ballard's story and artistry? I don't know). I suspect this book will be read and recommended for many years to come.

This is an account of JG Ballard's childhood in Shanghai during World War II when he was imprisoned in an internment camp away from his parents but just knowing that alone tells you nothing about the book. Yes, it takes place in WWII but that's almost irrelevant to the book, Jim is barely aware of the war as far as most people would conceive it and the entire war seems to take place mostly on the periphery . . . if it doesn't affect him directly than he doesn't care. On one level this is a nicely detailed account of life in Shanghai, especially in the beginning. Ballard is a good enough writer that he can describe such mundane events with enough flair that they take on another ambiance entirely. This becomes more pronounced as Jim winds deeper into the war itself, with the book becoming almost dream like in its quality. A lot of people I think object to the actions of Jim, which are very much what we don't expect. He's fairly self centered and makes a lot of weird rationalizations but I had no trouble understanding his POV, even if I didn't totally agree with it. He's a kid caught in something he can barely understand, so he has to break it down into something he can understand and sometimes that means making it a game and sometimes that means doing some things that most of us would interpret as cruel. That was the most interesting part of the novel for me, watching Jim trying to cope with the events around him, deal with the fact that he can barely remember his parents, with the fact that the only life he can really remember after a while are in the camp itself. With everything filtered through his perceptions the reader has to evaluate for him or herself what exactly the truth is . . . Jim's perception of some characters can change over and over, or maybe not even agree with what the character is doing, but that's because he's looking at it through the eyes of a child and by way of Jim, so is the reader as well. The white flash of the atom bomb that comes toward the end isn't even a climax, it's just another strange event in a war where everything strange is normal and for Jim it doesn't even signify the end of the war, for him the war never really seems to end. Haunting in its grim depiction of reality, this stands as one of the better books to come out about WWII simply for its personal perspective.

My friend recommended this book to me because I'd read the color purple so she thought I'd like it. I did! The books about a young boy who is abandoned in Shanghi during world war II. The events that follow the boy through finding himself alone and to eventually, being held in a prison of war camp by the Japanese are breath-taking. Some parts of the book were a little drawn out for my liking but all in all, this is a great book for your collection.

Ballard novels have never really impressed me - they seem too unfocused and convoluted. I am a big fan, however, of his short stories - generally well-written, interestingly plotted, and providing just the right amount of alienation, making even a mundane situation seem like an otherworldly experience. "The Best Short Stories of..." is a great place to start, with many fiction and sci-fi classics, a great representation of the short story form. "War Fever" is a worthy follow-up. I don't know why it took me so long to try these stories, but they are definitely worth it. Here, he doesn't really go out of his way to write in any established genre (sci-fi, horror), but his stories seem to drift that way ever so slightly, as if trying to just tread the edge of such. He uses some interesting variations with form as well, seeing what the reader will accept as a story: a questionnaire? An index? Both are equally valid, and Ballard uses them to great effect. Give this collection a try and see how well the stories hold up to his more classic works. I think you'll find that his output from the mid to late '80s was just as good.

I'll let the scholarly types explain all the deep insight contained in these stories. All I can say is this is the collection I hand out to people who want to explore Ballard's work. Some great stories in there.

These are some of the most creative short stories I've read. Ever. A sailor wrecks his chemical-laden ship on a remote Caribbean island, and the island environment reacts surprisingly well. A young assassin escapes an English mental institution and begins targeting astronauts. A man locks himself in his house and locks the rest of the world out...forever. Intelligently written, well-researched, and ever fascinating, these stories represent Ballard at his visionary best. I couldn't put it down!

I got this book in a used bookstore in Vermont and perhaps it illuminated Ballard moreso than criticism, etc. ever could. This tells about his life from the end of "Empire..." until the eighties and.... hmmm.... well... explains a lot about where he was drawing source material from for books like "The Atrocity Exhibition" which, without this, seems a little bit more extreme than perhaps with it it is.

Aside from that, it is an engaging story. You care about the characters, and you care about the author. You meet people and see things and have a good time.....

I would suggest this book as not something for someone who is just looking for a read but more for someone who is into Ballard and wants clarification... and details... about him....

Empire of the Sun was one of the best examples of putting your life up to a critical analysis and staring unflinchingly at it . . . Ballard's portrayal of himself during World War II as a child has to rank as one of the more honest (even when it's not so flattering) attempts at a self-charactization that I can really only compare to Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night. Here he continues his own story, using the first person this time out and extending the narrative past World War II and nearly into his present. The beginning is a bit off for those who have read Empire of the Sun since some of the details gone over don't seem to coincide with the events we learned in the previous book but he manages to again evoke its' dreamlike qualities. From there it's mostly episodic and carried by Ballard's keen eye for events and gift for description, through his eyes the sixties and beyond become almost a shared hallucination, something that you wake up from and you're not sure if it really happened or not. There's no overarching narrative to the book, though his quest to overcome the wounds that were opened by his time in the internment camp is a running theme that partly gets resolved in the end, during the time of the making of the Empire of the Sun movie. Still, like real life there are jagged loose ends, lost characters and a graceful melancholy that holds everything together well. Perhaps the only complaint are the sex scenes, far from offensive, they seem almost cold and sterile, like Ballard was sitting there taking notes during the acts themselves, which could be the point for all I know. Because it covers so much more time it doesn't have the searing focus that the previous novel did, but the wide variety of events and times are engaging in their own right and just when you think Ballard has exhausted his ability to put a new spin on describing things, he pulls another effortless phrase out that can't help but stick in your head. A book you probably have to experience more than read, those coming out of Empire of the Sun wanting to see more will probably come away satisfied.

'The Kindness of Women' is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read - it gripped me with the shock of seeing deep into a man's hurt but inspired psyche, it left me weeping in pity for Ballard and marvelling at his survival. And laughing out loud. The account of Ballard's life after Singapore, this is no ordinary narrative autobiography - rather, a series of chapters each of which might stand as a small masterpiece alone, each like the fragment of a smashed mirror reflecting a piece of Ballard's life in microcosm - his wife and her tragic death, his friends, his children (the chapter called 'Magic World' should open every 'anthology of happiness' ever published), his involvement with the 60s through his crashed car exhibition (out of which came Crash, the basis of Cronenburg's film) and his fascination with television. Women provide the linking thread through it all - the ones who Ballard loved, made love to, or in turn loved him - his wife, Miriam, most unforgettably. But the key is an account of a man coming to terms with himself and his violent childhood - in the end what one leaves this book with is a sense of the kindness of Ballard. For this beautiful, modest, deceptively simple book, shot through with images and symbols of suffering, pain, madness and death, is in the end, more than any of his other books, a celebration of life, of love, of friends and of people. Towards the end, Ballard remarks how it had taken him most of his life to realise how these simple things were what made him happy - the rest were just dross. For anyone who has ever questioned their life, or felt great pain in their heart or in their soul, or experienced suffering of any kind - this book offeres the promise of redemption and catharsis. READ IT. It is a work for us all, a book of which one can truly say it has enriched the world. Thank you, James.

And it's more affordable than the used editions sold here!.....

J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel "High Rise" contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author: alarming psychological insights, a study of the profoundly disturbing connections between technology and the human condition, and an intriguing plot masterfully executed. Ballard, who wrote the tremendously troubling "Crash," really knows how to dig deep into our troubling times in order to expose our tentative grasp of modernity. Some compare this book to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," and there are definite characteristics the two novels share. I would argue, however, that "High Rise" is more eloquent and more relevant than Golding's book. Unfortunately, this Ballard novel is out of print. Try and locate a copy at your local library because the payoff is well worth the effort.

"High Rise" centers around four major characters: Dr. Robert Laing, an instructor at a local medical school, Richard Wilder, a television documentary producer, Anthony Royal, an architect, and the high rise building all three live in with 2,000 other people. Throughout the story, Ballard switches back and forth between these three people, recording their thoughts and actions as they live their lives in the new high-rise apartment building. Ballard made sure to pick three separate people living on different floors of the forty floor building: Laing lives on the twenty fifth floor, Wilder lives on the second floor, and Royal lives in a penthouse on the fortieth floor (befitting his status as the designer of the building). Where you live in this structure will soon take on an importance beyond life itself.

At the beginning of the story, most of the people living in the building get along quite well. There are the usual nitpicky problems one would expect when 2,000 people are jammed together, but overall people move freely from the top to the bottom floors. A person living on the bottom floors can easily go to the observation deck on the top of the building to enjoy the view, or shop at the two banks of stores on the tenth and thirty-fifth floors. Children swim and play in the pools and playgrounds throughout the high rise without any interference. Despite the fact that well to do people live in the building, with celebrities and executives on the top floors, middle-class people on the middle floors, and airline pilots and the like on the bottom ten floors, everyone gets along reasonably well-at first.

Then things change. The gossip level increases among the residents, and parties held on different floors start to exclude people from other areas. In quick succession, objects start to land on balconies, dropped by residents on higher levels. Equipment failures, such as electrical outages, lead to mild assaults between residents. Cars parked close to the building are vandalized, and a jeweler living on the fortieth floor does a swan dive out of the window. Every incident leads to further acts of violence and increasing chaos in the lives of those in the building. People begin to take a greater interest in what's going on where they live than in outside activities and jobs. As the violence escalates, elevators and lobbies on each floor turn into armed camps as the residents attempt to block any encroachments on their territory. What starts out as a book about living in a technological marvel quickly morphs into a study of how technology can cause human beings to regress back into primitivism. Moreover, Ballard tries to draw a correlation between the technology of the building and this descent into a Stone Age mentality. He shows in detail how the residents of the apartments sink back into the morass, passing through a classical Marxist structure of bourgeoisie-proletariat, moving on to a clan/tribal system, to a system of stark individuality. In short, Ballard tries to equate our striving towards individuality through technology with how we started out in our evolution as hunter-gatherers, as individuals seeking individual gains. The promise that technology will liberate the individual is not the highest form of evolution, argues Ballard, but is actually a return to the lowest forms of human expression.

Within a few pages of the story, I thought this might turn out to be very similar to a Bentley Little book. Little, nominally a horror writer but often a social satirist, often takes a situation like this and shows how people collapse under the pressures of modern life. My belief was not born out, however, not because Ballard doesn't take certain situations over the top but because he imbues his work with a significant philosophical subtext that Little would never write about. Bentley Little is all about focusing on the over the top, outrageous incidents of humanity's decline, whereas Ballard is more interested in serving as a preacher on anti-humanistic technology, thundering out a jeremiad concerning where we might go if we do not take the time to think very carefully about the society we wish to create.

"High Rise" is a dark, forbidding tale of woe that is sure to get a reaction from anyone who reads it. There seem to be few out there who can deliver such devastating blows to our love of technology as Ballard does in his works. This author is often referred to as a science fiction writer, but "High Rise" works just as well on a horror level. So does "Crash," when I think about it, although the cold, detached prose of that book is not present in "High Rise." Whatever genre Ballard falls into, this book delivers on every level.

There's nothing Ballard loves more than microcosms ("Rushing To Paradise", "Concrete Island", "Day of Creation") and in this one, he isolates the factors of human society and puts it up against our animal natures. The result is as fascinating as it is ultimately horrible. Very well-written, and strong both as a novel that raises a philosophical question and as a straight-ahead horror novel.

On a side note, I found this book in print, new editions, in a couple of major Canadian bookstore chain in Montreal. Yet it doesn't seem to be in print in the U.S. What's up?