exhibition chronopolis super-cannes conversations

books:

23 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Counterpoint, 1999

"Crossing frontiers is my profession."
If there's anything crazier than coffee, it's cocaine, and this novel revels in the cultural effects of the hyperstimulant. Hyperstimulation is my middle name, man, and this book'll hit your frontal lobes like a weekend in Vegas with all the pretty lights. The main character goes on a journey from a wild coastal town in Spain to a massive social experiment carried out by a guy who makes Jim Jones ...

Crash: A Novel

117 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Picador, 2001

Sex and Car Crashes
I first read J.G. Ballard's "Crash" in early 1997, in anticipation of the release of the film adaptation by David Cronenberg. It stuck with me--it's the kind of novel that is impossible to forget--and now, eleven years later, I have just finished my second reading. As austere and steely as the automobiles that the characters live out their sexual fantasies within, "Crash" is a mesmerizingly ...

Diary of a Genius

18 reviews
Salvador Dali

Solar Books, 2007

Genius without a frying pan
Hilarious and captivating! A rollercoaster ride that twists and turns through the mind of Dali offering cohesive dialogue and thoughts blended with undecipherable rants and hallucinations. This book gives the reader an intimate view of an artistic genius through the eyes and actions of Dali. He walks a thin line between genius and madman, mostly the latter. If it were not for his beloved wife ...

The Day of Creation: A Novel

7 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Picador, 2002

A delirious psychological odyssey...
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 ...

Empire of the Sun

8 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Simon & Schuster, 2005

Humanity, stripped to its core
My first introduction to this story was, like many others, through Steven Spielberg's adaptation. For me, the hauntingly beautiful "Suo Gan" that serves as that movie's de facto theme song perfectly captures the fragile yet enduring beauty of humanity that Spielberg so successfully captures in his movie version. The movie abounds with poignant moments of hope, warmth, and exhilaration amongst ...

The Atrocity Exhibition (Flamingo Modern Classics)

30 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Flamingo, 2001

the atrocity exhibition
the atrocity exhibition is a watershed and seminal work in the canon of jg ballard. ballard is regarded and indeed classified as a writer in the 'science fiction' genre. if you consider science fiction to be the domain of 'star wars' et al. then reappraise, reevaluate and restart your imaginative capacity NOW. ballard bestrides the real essence of what science fiction is all about. along with ...

Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography
J. G. Ballard

Fourth Estate, 2008

The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard

7 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Picador, 2001

Some of the best short fiction
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.

Concrete Island: A Novel

19 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Picador, 2001

I am the island
This modern 'Robinson Crusoe' tale tells the story of an architect trapped in a concrete traffic island after a car crash. Man's selfishness is exposed by the fact that nobody stops for him. He meets his 'Friday's in the form of two outcasts surviving in a shelter on the island, 'their last hiding place, appropriately in the centre of this alienating city.' Like the main character in Kobo ...

The Crystal World

10 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988

Spellbinding
This is an interesting piece of literature, not quite a fantasy story, but not quite within the bounds of reality. The characters are normal people, the setting is a small town with nothing special about it, except that it is beside a jungle where jewels grow out of the ground like weeds, and as a tumor, overtake anyone or anything in their way. If you can find your way out, before becoming a ...

The Drowned World

10 reviews
J. G. Ballard

HarperPerennial, 2006

The world ends, not with a bang, but a gurgle
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 ...

Running Wild

18 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

A real gem; shiny, smooth, hiding smoky depths and possessed of a undeniable gravity of presence.
Some short novels beg to be fondled long after being read. This volume is just such a lush curio. I also find this to be Ballard's most readable, or should I say stylistically restrained, work.

Chronopolis

2 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Berkley, 1979

Some of Ballard's best stories
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.

J.G. Ballard: Quotes

11 reviews
J.G. Ballard

Re/Search Publications, 2004

The Portable Ballard
In J.G. Ballard Quotes, author Ballard and Quotes editor V. Vale continue a relationship which stretches back twenty years. Along with being the finest writer of our time, Ballard is a keen social observer, as well as a thinker of unique and visionary perspective: "Does the future still have a future?" "The open coffins lay empty, ready to catch the American pilots who would soon fall ...

The Complete Short Stories: v. 2
J. G. Ballard

HarperPerennial, 2006

War Fever

5 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

The prodigal Sun
This remarkable collection demonstrates once again how Ballard is one of literature's best kept secrets. Fourteen intelligent, intense and vividly written short stories challenge our theories of the recent future. It is one of the mysteries of our own time that someone casting as long a shadow as does Ballard, is virtually unknown in his native England, let alone America. This book, with its ...

Super-Cannes: A Novel

18 reviews
J. G. Ballard

Picador, 2002

Brilliant Slow Burn Ballard
This book's story is told through the eyes of an english pilot (Paul Sinclair) who is recovering from knee injuries and unable to fly. The book begins with Paul accompanying his young wife Jane to Eden-Olympia - a semmingly utopian business park overlooking Cannes. They arrive to discover that they are taking over the house of Jane's predecessor - Greenwood - an englishman who went on an armed ...

J.G. Ballard Conversations

5 reviews
J.G. Ballard

Re/Search Publications, 2005

sparkling bathers in near-futuristic water-slide playground utopias somehow magically growing out of vast deserts
The work that has earned J.G. Ballard his reputation as a prophet of the present runs the full gamut from the perverse to the catastrophic, from the utterly Surreal to the deeply personal. In J.G. Ballard Conversations, a new collection of interviews from RE/Search, Ballard exercises his trenchant observations live and uncensored. Running jags on the politics of paranoia are illumed with ...

High Rise (Flamingo Modern Classic)

10 reviews
J.G. Ballard

Firebird Distributing, 1998

Technology as the Ultimate Destroyer
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 ...

The Complete Short Stories: v. 1
J. G. Ballard

HarperPerennial, 2006

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