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The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1
by
J.G. Ballard
Originally published in 1 vol.: London: Flamingo, 2001.
Paperback, 784 pages
Published
February 1st 2010
by Harper Perennial
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This book is a bad buy for a book blogger. Volume 1 is so huge that it will probably take me a year or more to finish it. Meanwhile my blog will become an arid desert, deprived of nourishment, a victim of the Great World Slump, while I idle away depraved hours in the company of this prolific perfectionist.
In the introduction, Mr. Ballard accuses modern readers of having lost the knack of reading short stories. They are too used to baggy and long-winded TV soaps. Most novels, he claims, "would ha...more
In the introduction, Mr. Ballard accuses modern readers of having lost the knack of reading short stories. They are too used to baggy and long-winded TV soaps. Most novels, he claims, "would ha...more
Oct 07, 2011
Jellybean
is currently reading it
What a writer! his short stories always leave you wanting to know more (how all good shorts should be)
you sometimes have to account for the years in which he wrote them but he has incredible forward thinking. Not finished it yet as relishing every story. (short stories you cant gobble down in one like you can a novel well i cant anyway my mind confuses the stories!!
you sometimes have to account for the years in which he wrote them but he has incredible forward thinking. Not finished it yet as relishing every story. (short stories you cant gobble down in one like you can a novel well i cant anyway my mind confuses the stories!!
If you're a fan of a certain author who likes to trace their history from their early writings to the realization of their main concepts, then this is a book for those JG Ballard fans. This first collection features Ballard as a mostly sci-fi writer and hints only at his concepts of technology and dehumanization that would cme to fruition in Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition. As a writer, Ballard is always in top form, but a few stories here have concepts that seemed rather half baked to me, lik...more
Interesting, if a little weird at times. I'm not really into sci-fi/futurism but these were easy reading. There were some recurrent themes (the development of auditory technology for example) but I did think that the author's view of women seemed to be a little bit stuck on the sex angle.
If you get only one book by Ballard, make it this one. He excels at short stories.
There are some real gems in here (especially the Vermillion Sands stories), and the variety of ideas present in the stories is absolutely amazing - especially if one considers they were published in the time period of only 6-7 years or so! Ballard is one of my favorite writers, and it's an excellent feeling to see him shine in his earlier and shorter efforts as well. The prose flounders sometimes, and some of the stories feel like throwaway one-shots, but many others are genuinely powerful and i...more
Any writer living now who wants to write science fiction (there is the occasional weird tale or Alfred Hitchcock Present's-type crime story mixed in) or fantasy has to read this. No excuses.
Amazing stuff, visionary, compelling, clear, personal. Some of the earliest material is a little shaky but Ballard quickly finds his dry, clear, clinical voice.
Not available in America. Pony up the cash and be taught how its done!
Amazing stuff, visionary, compelling, clear, personal. Some of the earliest material is a little shaky but Ballard quickly finds his dry, clear, clinical voice.
Not available in America. Pony up the cash and be taught how its done!
indispensible
As much as I wanted to like it, as much as I tried to like it, I just cannot finish this book. It's not Ballard, it's me. This book and I just weren't meant to be. For serious fans of old sci-fi, this collection is likely to be a real treat. But for me, I think it's time to give up and move on.
May 21, 2013
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J.G. Ballard (James Graham Ballard) was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China where his father was a businessman. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and a Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF.
In 1956 his f...more
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Mar 24, 2013 05:31am