I enjoyed this book, but I think it could have been told better as a short story or novella. The basic plot is good, and the implications for the fate of the universe really got me going, but the plot tends to drag, and the characters go in circles, not accomplishing much. Mind you, I think it's pretty apparent from the writing that this was intended: fairly thin characters serving to introduce the reader to an interesting situation (and not even explaining it, necessarily). Overall, however, I don't think that this style would appeal to first-time readers, and I can understand why some don't get into his works.

i've read ballard at his extremes (crash, empire of the sun) and found this short book to be economically told, filled with wonder and dread. what i truly appreciated was ballard's willingness to leave things open-ended, to describe rather than explain, and to let his nightmare world function fully under it's own logic. now if i can just get these crystals out of my arm...

Even by the most basic definition of "science-fiction" this book barely makes the cut . . . it doesn't really take place in the future, doesn't feature new technology, doesn't try to rewrite the laws of physics, you can even understand it without a degree in higher mathematics. Ballard's always been too concerned with the psychological and what lies inside the human heart to be a real SF writer but in the end, it's the story itself that counts, whatever genre label you want to slap onto it. What makes this book so effective is the calm contrast of the utterly unfathomable with the completely normal. Dr Sanders receives a letter from friends in a part of Africa saying really weird stuff about everything turning to crystal . . . curious, he travels there and finds that there weren't speaking metaphorically . . . everything, trees and all, are slowly being converted to crystal, and there's mounting evidence that the rest of the world is going to soon follow suit. Against this backdrop Ballard lets Sanders attempt to make some sense of what's going on. The unwaveringly calm tone of the novel only accents the subtle creepiness of the whole affair and every time you think Ballard's run out of ways to describe crystals and jewels, he figures out yet another one. Symbolism and imagery run amok in this story, there's definitely some sort of quasi-religious (or at least good/evil) aspect to all the crystalization going on but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Which is another good thing about the book, unlike most SF writers Ballard doesn't take the conceit that everything we encounter in this Universe we can understand and while possible explanations for what's happening abound (most of which don't make any sense anyway) there's never a definitive reason given, so at the end of the book you're left with a lot of questions, but the good kind, the kind that make you think. Thus readers expecting neat and tidy endings are advised that will be disappointed if they go into this book with that sort of attitude. In the end it's Ballard's realistic tone set against fantastic events and his ability to draw the reader into his world and make it come alive (even while the world itself is fossilizing) that causes the book to linger in your mind. His haunting depiction of a crystal world won't be something you'll easily forget.

I would rate a few of the stories contained in this book with five stars, but other stories bring the total rating down to 3 stars. These are the stories which I would rate with 5 stars: "The Concentration City", "Chronopolis", "Thirteen for Centaurus", and "The Sublimiminal Man". "The Concentration City" is set somewhere in the future where somethings taken for granted now have long been forgotten. Hence things have to be reinvented and rediscovered. Because of "development" however, there are almost insurmountable barriers to reinvention. "Chronopolis" is a fascinating story of how using watches and clocks became illegal. "Thirteen for Centaurus" is about a space station supposedly travelling to a distant gallaxy. "The Sublimiminal Man" is aptly named because it is about exactly what the title says. The rest of the stories just didn't hold my interest. Some of them were very complex while others were simple but didn't have a good plot. Indeed, some of the stories had no plot at all. As far as climax is concerned, none of his stories had a climax. Most of his stories should be read mainly for the experience as opposed to a good meat and potatoes story. One thing about J.G. Ballard is that he certainly is very imaginative and creative.

Ballard is one of the great "conceptualizers" of modern literature. The premises of his stories are the most immediately striking thing about them. Sometimes the story doesn't live up to the expectations he creates, but this is probably because he sets the bar so high.

In any case, whether a Ballard story is a total or only a partial success, it invariably provides plenty of food for thought. Three of them--"The Overloaded Man", "The Drowned Giant", and "The Garden of Time"--rank among my all-time favorites for their perfect fusion of speculative and mythic qualities. The more technology-based stories ("Concentration City", "The Voices of Time") are more interesting for their ideas than their execution.

In the introduction to this volume, Anthony Burgess hits on the central importance of Ballard's work: "Ballard considers that the kind of limitation that most contemporary fiction accepts is immoral... Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination." If you agree, buy this book.

This is some of the best short fiction ever written. A friend of mine lent me this book. I've read a lot more J.G Ballard because I loved this book so much, but have not enjoyed Ballards other work as much. Most of the stories deal with mans struggle to cope - with technolgy, with fear, with relationships with change etc. There's a few dud stories but most are home runs.

I read the only information that Amazon had posted on this title, a seemingly dry academic table of contents, and decided to go for it. I was desperately curious to see what kind of analysis this was about Ballard, and my chance was richly rewarded. I do have one caveat: this IS a dense academic analysis. As an intense Ballard fan and possessing a graduate degree, I fell in love with the book. As author Roger Luckhurst points out, Atrocity Exhibition is a hard title to have a discussion about. If you've been searching for someone to analyze Ballard with, get this title and join Roger.

The title refers to Ballard's nebulous place between mainstream and science fiction, the "angle between two walls." Luckhurst points out the attempts that have been made to categorize Ballard, but that's the last thing he is attempting to do here. Instead Luckhurst focuses on several of the major themes and processes at work inside Ballard's fiction: surrealism, globalism, catastrophe. The chapter analyzing Vermilion Sands was amazing. Reading Roger discuss the readability AND unreadability of Ballard's work, I knew I had found a kindred Ballardian. Hardcore fans, this is the second most required about-Ballard title after the Re/Search #8/9 Ballard book.

I am not usually a devotee of the short story compilation, but found this collection by Ballard, surely the most cerebral of sci-fi authors, to be utterly compelling. Nine of the works (the tenth "Dead Time" seems oddly out of place here), are complete entities in their own right, but together, compliment each other into creating a bizarre and disturbing, but scarily plausible vision of what humankind is becoming. Civil war erupts in the UK, whilst elsewhere, cyber-recluses fester in their fortress homes. Folk experiment with practical time travel, living their lives in fleeting moments of lucidity, whilst others get married and have families with spouses they can never meet. My particular favourite The Smile, rings faint echoes of Wilde's Dorien Gray and chilled me to the bone though I read it on a hot sunny day in my garden. Ballard's visionary style is as innovative as ever, often employing startling imagery that grabs the reader at a visceral level. Myths will not be to everyone's taste. If, however, you are an adventurous soul, I thouroughly recommend this book which, although parts of which are a quarter of a century old, remains hugely valid today.

how I feel about this book, my first Ballard. So I looked for other readers' reviews. Found two. One giving it 1 star; the other 5 stars. I can understand. Found it new, interesting, clever. But now half-way through the book I'm wondering if I even want to continue. I don't know where it's going --- but do I care?

I first read this book many years ago. Its vivid all-too-real/unreal imagery left me inspired, transfixed and praying for the day when this novel would be transported to the large screen. Definitely not Spielberg's next Ballard picture, that's for sure. Perhaps Abel Ferrara and Bernardo Bertolucci could get together on this one............................................

The viewers who gave this book negative feedback obviouslydon't know the difference between magic realism and Jell-O puddingpops. Anthony Burgess (you know, the guy who wrote Clockwork Orange, among many other brilliant novels?) listed this novel as one the best 100 post WWII Novels. You might have also heard of a little movie Spielberg made not too long ago -- Empire of the Sun. Yeah, well, it's based on Ballard's Autobiographical novel of the same title.

Yes, this is an experimental novel. Yes, you can call it magic realism, or whatever buzzword they're using nowadays to describe fiction that breaks or stretches the molds of traditional narrative structure, but despite all this, for anyone who has half a brain and loves good writing and mind-altering fantasy, this is a good novel. (Borges selected Ballard's awesome short story "The Drowned Giant" in the anthology The Book of Fantasy.") Ballard is brave enough to do a lot of self-exploration in his work -- he isn't afraid to expose himself totally, unlike some more marketable American pop authors I know. Ballard works in a genre all his own, and he's one of the most fascinating writers working today, in any "genre."

Ballard's 1987 novel "The Day of Creation" is a sinuous odyssey through a surrealized Africa drunk on the potential of Western technology. Ballard's narrative voice is rich and engaging, the fluctuating exterior and interior landscape rendered with delirious conviction. "The Day of Creation" reads like a particularly brutal 20th century fable, deftly pointing the cool lens of technology on our secret fascination with the Dark Continent.

"The Day of Creation" has been compared to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." But Ballard's novel is at once deeper and more topical; by infusing his story with a compelling and unlikely romance, Ballard reveals a sensual versatility lesser writers would gladly kill for. Read as an adventure story or as erotic allegory, "The Day of Creation" is a pleasure.

The imagery in this book is very engrossing, and after reading particular chapters I put the book down and could vividly see the Mallory River flowing before me, Noon swimming in its flowing currents. Even with this imagery, though, I find that the characters were very poorly developed for Ballard, and that though it was written in the first person I did not get into the mindset of Dr. Mallory as I was able to get into the mind of James Ballard in "Crash". A reccomended read, yes, but read a few of his others first.

What I liked best about this novel was the images that Ballard was able to evoke. To be honest, I started reading it and lost interest. I picked it up some years later and was hooked. He truly can create amazing pictures in the mind unlike most writers. It is perplexing to me to see a book like The Firm getting such good reviews and being read by millions when this one is hardly even a footnote, when this book is superior in just about every way. It is not his best. I would say Crystal World, High-Rise and The Drowned World are his best, but this is a very original novel.

An extremely important work and one that should be read by anyone interested in the uses of Political Correctness for repression. In ordinary circumstances a person like Dr. Barbara would either remain harmless or would swiftly be judged an intellectual fraud and a homocidal maniac. What this woman succeeds in doing, however, is to use the "liberal" predilections of other people against them to contrive dystopic circumstances that are extraordinary, putting her outside the possibility of judgment and allowing her to murder at will. The models for Dr. Barbara derive from such ancient sources as the myth of the Women of Lemnos and such modern ones as Moby Dick: she is a feminist Captain Ahab and is endowed with all of Melville's madman's persuasiveness and executive skills. A brilliant book, which belongs on the same shellf with Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Lord of the Flies.

And I'm glad to say it was easy for him to chew. This is a perceptive and actually pretty nasty take on the more extreme ends of enviromentalism and feminism, the points where the former becomes psychosis and the latter becomes sexism of a virulent and violent sort.

What I love most about Ballard is his willingness to probe the darker corners of the human psyche. It's a rare gift to want to explore these places, let alone use them to comment on our society. This is an excellent book and worth your cash!

I really liked Rushing to Paradise and I don't see how it generated such negative reviews; except to say that it IS a "politically incorrect" book. Author Ballard has strange, almost hallucinatory descriptive powers which he delivers in cool, matter of fact language. Above all, the book resonates with a twilight of the gods atmosphere. Maybe not for everyone, but this doesn't make it a bad book. Quite the contrary.

Though most of Ballard's work contains unvarying plots, motifs, characters, etc., I was quite stunned to find that 'Super Cannes' and 'Cocaine Nights' are - albeit with minor tweaks and variations - actually one and the same book. From the backdrops to the manic idiosyncrasies of the characters, the key components in each enjoy such thorough correspondences and identity that a synopsis of one book effectively adumbrates the other. It seems Ballard's technique of thematic reiteration and repetition has achieved such perfection as to suggest that an author has finally (and remarkably) cloned his own work and slipped it over the transom. Read both books if you wish to scrutinize the sublime homogeneity of Ballard's imagination. Or pick one or the other, and feel satisfied that you've economized on money and time.

Though most of Ballard's work contains unvarying plots, motifs, characters, etc., I was quite stunned to find that 'Super Cannes' and 'Cocaine Nights' are - albeit with minor tweaks and variations - actually one and the same book. From the backdrops to the manic idiosyncrasies of the characters, the key components in each enjoy such thorough correspondences and identity that a synopsis of one book effectively adumbrates the other. It seems Ballard's technique of thematic reiteration and repetition has achieved such perfection as to suggest that an author has finally (and remarkably) cloned his own work and slipped it over the transom. Read both books if you wish to scrutinize the sublime homogeneity of Ballard's imagination. Or pick one or the other, and feel satisfied that you've economized on money and time.

In a continuation of the theme he explored in Cocaine Nights, as well as other works, author J.G. Ballard pens a mystery about a cloistered, high-tech community coming to terms with its need for recreational sociopathology.

Eden-Olympia is an ultra modern business park and insular community nestled uncomfortably among the olive groves and marinas of the Cote d'Azure and where recently a respected young doctor embarked on a vicious killing spree. New residents soon find they have little time for anything but work and begin showing mental and physical problems that threaten to overtake the would be corporate paradise. In classic ballardian form, rogue psychiatrist Wilder Penrose steps in and implements a regime in which workaholic CEO's, presidents and junior vp's are encouraged to sublimate their fantasies of criminality, sexuality and violence by taking part in "therapy sessions" of a most uncoventional type. While investigating the bizarre murder-suicide of the former doctor, protagonist Paul Sinclair soon finds himself drawn deeply into this ferment of bright modernity and dark venality.

While not on a level with some of his other work; (and his best work is awesome) and although his characters are rather remote, (as usual) Super-Cannes is still an invigorating book. Ballard's mythologizing of crashed airplanes...abandoned runways...car parks... swimming pools...and other totems of our time forms one of the more exotic contributions to literature, yet it works. A strangely lit poetry suffuses his novels, short stories and essays; and one can always count on him for an an unexpected vista. His relentless probing of the social/technological interface has yielded some unsettling prophecies. Super-Cannes is basically a parable about the future; and as Ballard views it, the future is now.

Perhaps it is the strangest. Is it good or not? That doesn't really matter.

What the reviewers, both favorable and not, seem to miss is that JG Ballard is a Surrealist. His fiction presents some of the most bizarre and uncanny images and situations in the driest, most matter-of-fact style; in other words, the essence of Surrealist style. He is also an avant-gardeist in that style, interested in the experimental possibilities of the novel. Plot, characters and the usual customs of the novel are not so important to Ballard, and the satisfaction of those elements will not be found in his work, which is more involved with situations and ideas.

"Crash" is not his very best work, but certainly his most controversial. If you have a taste for, or are intrigued by Surrealism, then you should read this novel, whether you end up 'liking' it or not. If you saw the movie and are interested in reading the book, keep in mind the movie was incredibly mild compared to the book. If you are interested in a unique vision of the possibilities of the imagination, especially in the sense that technology can literally transform the human mind and body in a way that hints at the possibility of a new species all together, then read this book.

There are very few books in existence that I know of which can prepare you for Crash. Nauseatingly disgusting and beautiful at the same time, author Ballard tries to find redemption in technological malaise. This is the first book I've ever read by Ballard, but if his other works are similar to Crash, he should be better known than he is presently. I should also mention that I've never seen the film version of this book. Within a few pages, I realized why Cronenberg made this into a film. Cronenberg has made a name for himself exploring the same bleak landscapes that Ballard apparently works in: namely, the marriage between humanity and technology. Crash shares some attributes with Cronenberg's Videodrome, at least in my opinion. What is interesting is that Cronenberg didn't do a film version of Crash much sooner (Crash was published in 1973).

The second thing that hits the senses while reading Crash is the writing style. Cold, detached medical terms jockey with lovingly descriptive phrases concerning technology. Ballard is a magician with the English language and Crash is a first class spell in the syntax department. The first thing that is noticeable, of course, is the sickeningly gory descriptions of car crashes, wounds and ... sex. Chins will hit the floor over the sheer magnitude of blood and sex within these pages. But this isn't violence for the sake of violence; it is a careful constructed theme showing the awful repercussions that technology has wrought on our lives. ... The characters are dehumanized, without a doubt, but what Crash does is to show how humans are trying to reconnect to their emotions and humanity. That they choose to do so through the very means that has robbed them of it is the paradox. All of the characters that see car crashes as erotic adventure are essentially lost people. Ballard and his wife Catherine engage in mindless affairs and word games because they have lost their humanity, their sense of being. Car crashes give them a means to attempt to assert some form of dominance over technology, and the fact that Vaughan has more scars than any of the others shows that he is much closer to achieving this than any of the others, explaining his hyper sexuality and dominant position in this group of crash aficionados.

Ballard brings the icons of technology into his story as well. Famous people such as Elizabeth Taylor, whom Vaughan wants to die with in a crash, are people most associated with technology. They are the faces we see in film and television, and could be seen as an organic face of technology. To meld with one of these figures in a crash is to go the extra step. Their death adds an extra dimension to the eroticism. It isn't just famous people that can bring this about. The character of Gabrielle is important in this context due to her leg braces and spinal supports. Gabrielle's organic existence, her very energy, is supported by technology. Ballard fantasizes about the metal braces and the special handles she needs in her car, explaining that they open up whole new avenues of eroticism.

Even though I can see the beauty of Ballard's prose work and understand his connections between technology and humans, this in no way means that this book didn't disgust me. My stomach occasionally does slow turns when I think back on a particular passage or event, and driving to work and school occasionally makes me feel queasy. The idea of imitating crash positions during ...intercourse isn't going to win over the chicks, either. This is a book that is tough to read but certainly worthwhile. Be careful about recommending this book to people. Some folks are bound to take it the wrong way.

"Crash," by J.G. Ballard was one of the strangest books I have ever read. From the beginning of the story, the reader knows that the story they are about to read is going to be something very different, but very exciting at the same time. This science fiction title focuses on the lives of a few people that are obsessed with the fetish between sex and car crashes. Eventually, all of the characters interact somehow deeply affecting their lives forever. Throughout the novel each character eventually gets more and more interested in the idea of the car crash, and having sex in a car.

This novel portrays a vast array of emotions to the reader from caring and tenderness, to violence and darkness. All of these emotions are weaved together very well by Ballard, somehow even fitting tenderness and violence together. I have never really looked at how car crashes and sexuality can be combined, but this book does is in a very good, although very strange way. Overall, a very good book that will keep your attention until the last page. Be prepared for something different, but entertaining.

In his quest for a wider audience, Ballard turns to the mystery and scores a moderate success. Yet Cocaine Nights has something in it to disappoint nearly everyone. It's sexual content is quite tame by current standards. It makes the lives of the rich and famous seem as monotonous as ours. As a mystery, it looses no real surprises; and it fails to deliver a penultimate punch. The social theory it explores, while interesting, is not likely to excite anyone. And his prose, the area in which Ballard is in a class all his own, is oddly muted. Still, I enjoyed this book greatly. I found the characters convincing, even sympathetic. Ballard's stylistic flashes, those strangely beautiful perspectives that charge his work, are strewn unexpectedly in the path of the reader. The book moves along at a steady clip. Finishing one of Ballard's novels is something akin to waking up from a dream. And for me at least, Cocaine Nights was an invigorating dream.

i have always been intrigued with the themes and topics ballards works have been dealing with. nevertheless, most of his novels could not satisfy me completely. COCAINE NIGHTS changed that. ballards' amazingly beautiful and poetic descriptive way of writing, a story about tomorrow's society set in our present, the dark side that lurks in each one of us. all of the above come together in this novel, and make COCAINE NIGHTS wahat i would consider ballards flagship work. reminiscent of FIGHT CLUB. great stuff.

And this is a brilliant novel of what lies under the thin veneer of civilisation that we all wear, an edgy exploration of the the violence that lies within us all. His usual sparkling, deceptively simple prose is here, together with a thrilling murder story, off-beat characters and a threatening air of menace lurking by the pools and apartments of the up-market retirement village. Ballard is tragically under-read, and I urge you to read Cocaine Nights, one of the best books of the 90s, and then move on to his other novels, particularly The Drought and High Rise, and then devour his short stories, which are nearly all perfectly crafted gems.