Ballard repeats, develops, and resolves his ideas about the psychological impact of space-travel and the temptation of breaking out of the constraints of Time. It's almost like watching someone hone a chess game, moving similar characters around in a similar fashion, but the small changes make all the difference...The reader is consoled for the narrative similarities by some of Ballard's most vivid imagery--sun-bleached aviators and the Cubist beauty of a world released from the fourth dimension. Two stories break away from this somewhat; one is a journey into the Amazon jungle in search of a downed spacecraft that gives a nod to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In addition, the last story in the anthology, unusually down to earth (for Ballard) and set in an unnamed tropical/South American location, seems almost like a collaboration between Ballard and--possibly--Ray Bradbury. A worthwhile read for a Ballard fan, a touch challenging for other readers.

I read the book several years ago in its Arkham House first ed. It floored me and has stayed with me ever since. These stories are amazing work. The idea, from one of the Canaveral stories, of people taking pieces of dead astronauts and making them into objects of religious veneration was astounding, and seemingly incredible until pieces of Columbia began to show up on eBay. This is simply one of the finest collections of sociological SF ever written--period. Ballard is proactive and prophetic here; I've read this collection again and again, and it's probably most haunting for those of us born during the Camelot era. We watched as Apollo 11 touched down and then we dreamed of space tourism to the moon and Mars bases by 2000. Now, as The Dream (with a capital D) of space travel limps along like a blind, poor beggar attacked by feral dogs, I keep returning to Ballard's collection. Read it, as my students will do this year, and weep for a lost dream.

I could hardly agree more with the previous review, except to give this fine book five stars. Ballard's stories are not so much literary inventions as they are dreams of worlds that exist in some yet undiscovered realm, which Ballard has been generous enough to describe for us. His bright, at times incandescent, use of metaphor and surreal imagery contrasts wonderfully with a cool, detached and beautifully fluid prose style. Readers of these stories may not appreciate what they find, but they WILL recognize that they have been someplace very different.

My personal favorite collection of stories from Ballard, and many people I've spoken to also hold a fondness for this group of stories. Although many of the story concepts repeat the theme of the tragic female figure and the tortured man who loves her and gets caught in the dramatic conflict, it is a lush and expansive vision that weaves through the collection. The title refers to a fictional beach resort, a playground of burnt out executives and movie stars at play, or in retreat from the rest of the world. As with most Ballard fiction, you get the distinct impression that these stories are actually taking place somewhere, and perhaps Ballard has just changed the names to protect the decadent. The vivid details of living clothing, cloud sculptors and singing sculptures are so intense, it's a bit of a surprise that Hollywood hasn't adapted some of these stories to the currently CGI movie craze. Then again, like most of what Ballard writes about, that could be coming just around the corner...

The beachfront, decadent community of Vermilion Sands is the setting for each of the nine wonderful stories in this collection. Vermilion Sands is where the rich are. They vacation, they play, they search for lost loves, and above all, they are horribly narcissistic.

Vermilion Sands is home to the magnificent singing sonic sculptures, tall statues that emit music or atonal sounds when they sense movement. The marvelous sand yachts of the rich, their trained sand rays (giant white manta rays that float through the air), the cloud-sculptors, the living clothes, and the psychotropic houses all live on in the mind long after the stories have been read. Vermilion Sands is a striking setting, one of the more memorable in fiction.

The themes of the stories are fairly similar. Most dwell on unattainable or forsaken love. In "Say Goodbye to the Wind", a former model pines for her departed love. In "Studio 5, the Stars" an aspiring poetess dreams of tragic love. And so it goes in each story. But the stories are fresh and have enough energy to overcome a repetitive theme.

Ballard's futuristic city stands as a monument to the power of a memorable fictional setting. Indeed, Vermilion Sands is as powerful as Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown or Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris to use two recent examples. I'm hoping that Mr. Ballad has seen fit to write more Vermilion Sands stories in the 30+ years since this collection was published. I can only hope that I find more.

This collection of elegant, minatory stories about the has-been resort community of Vermilion Sands and the human flotsam that washes up on its derelict shores comprises some of author J.G. Ballard's most accessible work. His imaginative gifts and jade cool prose are everywhere on display in these stories. Sailplane artists sculpt the clouds into likenesses of their patrons. Psychosensitive houses are driven insane by their owners and bio-fabrics shimmer and pulse to their wearers moods. Ballard likes to create strange, surreal outerscapes and unite these with the straitened innerscapes of his protagonists, then narrate what happens next. In Vermilion Sands he exceeds wonderfully

Chronopolis and other stories features some of Ballard's best stories (Man hole 69, Billenium, and my personal favorite, the garden of time). Some of the stories aren't that great. But Ballard is a good short story writer. And I certainly would pick these stories up than read tripe like Crash

This collection of stories from Ballard's early years displays him in full command of his considerable literary gifts. Ballard excels in the short form and this book contains some of his very best; most notably, The Drowned Giant and The Garden of Time. His vivid, visual and original imagination are coupled with a jade cool narrative style, resulting in a uniquely strange body of work. Chronopolis and Other Stories contains none of the excesses for which Ballard has been damned and praised, just sixteen fine short stories; two or three of which are among the best you'll ever read.

This Re/Search volume includes a comprehensive bibliography and numerous interviews with Ballard, most done during the 80's. I was amazed to see an 80's interview with ballard by Grahme Ravell, who has come into fame in his own right since then. Re/Search Ballard also has numerous excerpts as well as The Atrocity Exibition in full. The volume is filled with intriguing Ballard quotes, photos and other Ballard miscellany that would surely be difficult or impossible to find anywhere else. Well packaged, informative and useful. For the Ballard fan, not the new reader.

This book is an amazing introduction to the works of a man with great thoughts. The introductory interview contains almost too much information and opinions; it is hard to wrap your mind around. But for those of you up to the challenge, it is great reading. Ballard's fiction and non-fiction excerpts are all enticing and the biography is very interesting, giving justice to the very exciting life Ballard has lived. An excellent read for anyone interested in finding a new author, or for those who simply want to read more of Ballard's works.

Maybe even a 4.5. Not as comprehensive as "The Best Short Stories of...", but it's a good intro to Ballard's work. It gives a first-time reader a good idea of what to expect. Ballard writes some top-notch stories (The Drowned Giant, Bilennium, Deep End - all included here), but in his collections, they always seem to get diluted by the not-so-greats. Still, the majority of the stories in this book are quite good; more forward-thinking and original than anything that came out of that period. I think the best quality of his stories is that they deal with societal concerns, and not just sci-fi. Quite an enjoyable book.

This collection of beautifully strange stories contains some of Ballard's most accessible work. His unique style and surreal imagination are displayed well in, The Terminal Beach, End Game, and The Time Tombs. Though he casts a long shadow, there's really no one else out there like Ballard. I highly recommend this book.

In this, the first I believe, collection of J. G. Ballard's non-fiction writings, Ballard is again writing about his favorite themes and obsessions. Dali, Burroughs and Mae West all appear. This time, however, he is writing about them in reality, for book reviews and the like, not as characters and archetypes in a hallucinatory fictional landscape. Despite our knowledge that we a reading an alleged non-fiction collection, the overwhelming presence of the Ballard worldview remains and makes one wonder if perhaps the non-fiction of reality and the imagination of Ballard are more closely linked that we would like to admit. Ballard's prose and style shine through illuminating the seemingly mundane subject matter. Also the careful categorization of the essays/reviews furthers the reader's impression that this is indeed a Ballard collection. The chapter headings of Film, Lives, The Visual World, etc. and titles such as "Hitman for the Apocalypse" adorning the review of a book on Burroughs bring to mind the headers and chronology of The Atrocity Exhibition. This in not necessarily a book for Ballard beginners. Another point of entry would better initiate a reader new to Ballard. But if you are familiar with his work and his common themes and elements, it is fascinating to watch his skill as a writer and constructer as he creates vehicles of ideological validation from Sunday supplement subjects.

Ballard describes this collection of published essays and reviews as a continuation of his fiction "by surreptitious means". Those accustomed to Ballard's imaginative gifts will be pleased to discover them no less diminished in describing the extravagances and banalities of our fin du monde era. Above all, Ballard's distinctive, fluid flashes mark this book. On Max Ernst's "The Eye of Silence": "This spinal landscape with its frenzied rocks towering into the air above the slent swamp, has attained an organic life more real than that of the solitary nymph sitting in the foreground. These rocks have the luminosity of organs freshly exposed to the light. The real landscapes of the world are seen for what they are--palaces of flesh and bone that are the living facades enclosing our own subliminal consciousness." Ballard's words and worldview are always intelligent, if not always welcome. For those who can keep up, this book offers marvelous vistas.

Again Ballard is perverting our perceptions of life. You can either see that as a good thing or a bad thing. It's not an easy book to read. In fact at some times you may end up feeling frustrated with the book but if you persevere with it it'll be alright...once you have his notes explaining the book to you but even then he still leaves you to think about the nature of what it is all about

What I think the book is about is the whole cult of celebrity fame and the ever narrowing medical definition of it's conditions. What we see is that today's world is leading us to be dehumanized neurotic people with dangerous and repressed fetishes. Again the contents of Crash appear hear but in prequel form. He was only starting out his ideas of Vaughan's crazed nature and so on. There is also the reinactment of many of the car crashes such as JFK and Elizabeth Taylor and so on.

They say the book is experimental in it's approach. I'm not much of a book hound so I don't know what the hell they mean but it certainly one which is different in it's topical approach. Perhaps it could be said that it is experimental because it kinda reads as a magazine - a sort of doctor's journal where even the doctors are as insane as you are. You can read any part of it that you like and go over it again and again to suit your fancy. But it still holds out an enigma that will not make itself clear

Frustrating and not altogether enjoyable but it's a book that gets you thinking and makes you wonder - How messed up are we?

You're in for a bumpy ride...

The Atrocity Exhibition is an perversely original, deeply disturbing tale of the 'New Reality', and the disintegration of Society. It is bursting at the seams with a ferocious wit, sexuality and, always a key Ballard theme, much railing against the irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world. He writes with a spare, exact prose that almost makes his subject matter inviting, drawing us along irresistibly. His is the dark poetry of reason, rationalising the truly irrational. Beautiful words evoking hideous imagery. Sex and violence have never been so intrinsically linked. He wishes to arouse our dormant sensibilities, to shock us, perhaps test our tolerance threshold.

Much in common with Ballard's later Crash, this hauntingly powerful novel employs Burroughsesque non-linear techniques to convey his controversial ideas. The text is broken up into composite bands of sub-heading and paragraph, giving the reading a very fragmentary feel, and like The Naked Lunch it can be dipped into at any stage of its development with satisfying results. The prose exists in isolation, the essence of good writing. The barely-plotted, minimalist storyline reflects the central character's inner mindscape haunted by dreams of JFK and Monroe, dead astronauts and motor-crash victims, as he traverses the terrible wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, psychopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychotic turmoil to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.

The Atrocity Exhibition is cleverly controlled tour de force of inventive writing. Every page filled with death, depravity, delusion, genocide, or some other unspeakable vice.

We are disgusted at our own enjoyment.

Ballard has a knack for making his insane ideas and conceptsmake perfect sense. This is a perfect example of that. This book isfilled with breathstealing bizarre concepts. You can really get to thinking about them. Many ideas in this angered some. Liz Taylor, Jackie O, and especially Ronald Reagan are all hit hard by Ballard's vicious insight (I don't think Ballard trying to be insulting. He was just being... weird). It's hard to tell exactly what this book is. Is it about the Atrocity Exhibition or is it the Atrocity Exhibition? The letters found at the bottom of random pages point to the latter. Ballard throws away everything anything ever taught about writing, including plot and continuity so don't try to find any, and sets out to create pure art out of words. Does he succeed? Yes.

In 1988 this book on the ficticious pangbourne massacre was published. Since that time the columbine massacre and quite a few other massacres involving teens has occured and will undoubtedly continue. All or most of these massacres happened in times of economic prosperity in the US and were committed by white male teens from middle and upper middle class families. The book makes it very clear that the pangbourne massacre occured because the children felt compelled to break free of those things which the white upper class highly values (i.e. close-knit family, loving atmosphere, academic success, material possesions, living in a nice neighborhood, etc.). This seems ironic and troubling but if one puts some thought into it, it makes a lot of sense. Also, it is not just these values that cause (are causing) problems, it is rapid technological 'development' as well. I could discuss this issue further, but this is supposed to be a review not a soapbox. I would advise those interested in this book to also read the unabomber's manifesto.

I in no way advocate violence and terrorism, but I think I have a much better understanding of the root causes of the type of violence seen in recent years in schools throughout america after reading this book.

Just as he was able to foreshadow the Regan presidency in the late 60s, Ballard's finger on the cosmic pulse brings us "Running Wild." Although a British writer, much of what Ballard synthesizes seems to flourish more lividly in the US. This story of teens seemingly smothered with caring who rebel against the planned community they live in is yet another eerie prediction of the present, set in Britian in the story, yet it seems to be actually happening right now in the US. A cool, who-and-how-dunnit, I read this book at a quick pace, following the Scotland Yard investigator as he builds his unorthodox theories of what happened. More accessible that some of his global disaster novels, this is a good book for those new to Ballard, and a great addition to the collection for fans.

This book is where you should start off to understand Ballard's later fiction (CRASH, ATROCITY EXHIBITION, HIGH RISE, or anything after the early 1970's). This novella reveals Ballards signature pessimism and facination for the technological landscape: its inherent role in the systematization and categorizing of human behaviour. In RUNNING WILD, Ballard shows the devastating effect when our primal urges rears its ugly head after buried for too long. The novella is set in a self-contained living complex (much like HIGH RISE) where tragedy is struck. Like Freud, Ballard accepts the tragic, barbaric reality of humankind and continually asserts (which he does in his latest, COCAINE NIGHTS) that the primal nature of man will subvert, or altogether revolt against any "civilized" attempt to change it. This novel is depressing and revealing. Read it. It won't take long to finish it and it also won't be long before you become a Ballard fanatic.

This is one of my favorite Ballard novels and it's certianly got the hothouse waterworld-meets-heart-of-darkness atmosphere going to stir up that primordial fear in your gut. You can feel the sufficating swamp gas in the air like you are in a giant pressure cooker! (actually the waterworld comparison is pretty cheap on my part because it was an incredibly silly movie and has little in common with this book other than taking place in the future where the world is virtually covered with water...but you get the idea). Ballard has the uncanny ability to burrough under your skin with somewhat hypnotic prose. Definitely a mood piece and not your typical sci-fi. Don't order from Amazon.com though beacuse 20 dollars too expensive for a 190 page paperback and you'll get it a lot quicker (about 5 days total) from Amozon.co.uk (since it is unfortunately only published in the UK). One of my three favorite Ballard novels.

This is the first novel I read by J.G. Ballard. I first heard of the author 12 years ago after seeing "Empire of the Sun". At that time I had no idea that Ballard's early works were science fiction.

"The Drowned World" (Ballard's first novel) is set in a future where most of the planet is underwater or covered in lush jungle. Melting ice caps have caused the sea level to rise, and an altered climate has forced the population to flee to the areas of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Intense sunlight is causing the temperature to rise all the time, making the environment increasingly hostile to human life. The only creatures that thrive in the new conditions are fish, insects and reptiles, which are all growing bigger and bolder.

The mood of this book is brooding and melancholic. The small group of characters, who live in a tropical, submerged London, have dreams linked to a world millions of years in the past, as the Earth's ecology reverts to a prehistoric wilderness. There is an interesting discussion about the built-in "race memory" in the human psyche. People's fear of snakes and lizards can be linked to the time when early mammals lived in fear of the reptiles, who were the dominant lifeform millions of years ago. (And are becoming so again.)

I think some of the inspiration for "The Drowned World" may have come from John Wyndham's "The Kraken Wakes", which also featured a submerged London (although the climate was getting colder, not hotter). In turn "The Drowned World" may have been the inspiration for that much-maligned film "Waterworld". Ballard's writing style is descriptive like H.G. Wells and M.P. Shiel: poetic and elegant, if a little flowery.

Throughout the book there is an undercurrent of pessimism. This is not about adventure and discovery, but a world in decline (for humanity at least). In a planet prone to change, Earth has changed radically. Ballard plays with the theme of transformation in other books:"The Wind From Nowhere", "The Burning World" and "The Crystal World". In Ballard's series of disaster novels "The Drowned World" is, to use a cliche, the beginning of the End.

The cover of my version has a lizard sitting quite happily on some poor guy's face, which is the only part of his body sticking out of the water. For some reason, I really like it. This would be considered atypical SF if it came out today, I can't even imagine the reaction back in the sixties when this was first published, especially to an audience that had been raised on an audience of big guns and fast spaceships and heroes who solved problems by punching aliens in the face. Ballard's novel isn't about saving the world, in fact, the world is well past that point by the time the book opens and it's only going to get worse, all the people left can do is figure out how to live with the changes. As you can probably surmise from the title, climatic changes and the melting of the polar ice caps have caused the water levels in the world to rise, putting most cities under water and turning the world nearly into one big tropical ocean. This change is more than just cosmetic since it's apparently resurrecting racial memories buried deep within the collective unconscious, thus people start having weird dreams about times when the world used to be like this. Action packed? Not really. Hallucinogenic? At times. Different? You bet. Ballard succeeds mostly on the strength of his ability to convey this flooded, humid world in all its declining glory. The protagonists wander about almost aimlessly, not even sure why they do what they do. The "villains" of the piece provide a nice counterpoint to all the gloomy stuff but in the end serve as little more than a distraction, albeit a strangely entertaining one. In the end it doesn't cohere as nicely as the slightly better (in my opinion) "The Crystal World" where Ballard's prose is more finely polished in all its hazy glory, while the protagonist can be more easily identified with by the reader. The stuff with the pirates that take up most of the middle of the book is fun, but serves as little more than a backdrop and a soggy world just doesn't have that eerie outerworldy quality of a planet slowly turning to crystal. Also, the whole "racial memory" thing, while you could probably write a book on it, isn't really dealt with in any sort of detail here, it sort of pops up again when it's convenient. Still, for a debut this is a heck of a lot better than anything I could do and it's safe to say Ballard got a lot better real fast. Even then, this is a fine book well worth your time, because whatever Ballard does, he does better than just about anyone else.

Too bad "Crash" crashed at the box office, because it will probably repel most people from going any further into Ballard's books. Concrete Island is a little gem, featuring only three characters and a bizarre imprisonment, both physical and mental. At times morbid, at other times darkly cheerful. A peculiar little read, but memorable. I'll never think of carny acrobats in quite the same way again...

This book was very dream like ,I kept expecting the main character to wake up from his accident with a concussion...like Dorothy on the Wizard of Oz. Actually it was more like a nightmare. Imagine being trapped on a motorway island for weeks and not having the strength to get off of it. Try THIS one on that "Survivor" show! The characters in the story were not very complex but the story moved along and there was enough going on to compensate for that. It showed exactly to what lengths one would go if faced with being marooned on a concrete island. It was just under 200 pages and a short read by anyones standards....a good book to take on a vacation. That is as long as you don't plan to spend time on any deserted islands! The ending to the book was a bit of a letdown, but it leaves things open for a sequel, but how interesting would these characters be in NORMAL situations? If you enjoy reading the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, and Alex Garland...then you'll probably like this one enough to give it 4 stars also.

Gosh, I hate to see this great, little book slammed or passed over because people were unaware of what they were getting themselves into when they bought it.

Some of the negative or lukewarm reviews are correct in that those readers obviously did not like certain elements of the book, notably the lack of logical narrative progression or fuller character development but they are mistaken to consider these peculiarities of style as deficiencies worthy of criticism. This book is not intended to be a straightforward adventure story or a character driven drama, or even a novel with some surrealistic elements.

Concrete Island, like Ballard's most popular book Crash, is a novel length exploration of abstract concepts wrapped in a traditional narrative format. Consider Ballard's earlier, short science-fiction stories, where a characters' specifics are more or less incidental to the situations in which they are placed. Or his later short works where characters are no more than conceptual cyphers or sometimes just a specific instance of a notional character spanning across several stories.

With that in mind, the events and settings are supposed to be surreal and incomplete. The characters are supposed to be unrealistic and uni-dimensional. You aren't supposed to identify with anyone or anything, at least not physically, and then only to the extent that you might become aware of forces acting in your own life or impulses in your own psyche which these fantastical situations and characters represent.

So if you are familiar with Ballard's other work, or are interested in Ballard but want something a bit more approachable than, say, Crash or Atrocity Exhibition, then you will really enjoy Concrete Island - its relatively tight and fast moving, much more fleshed out than his shorter works with plenty for your brain to chew on for a while, but without frying your mind as much the Ronald Reagan-Liz Taylor psychosexual stuff.