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tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE's Reviews > The Wind from Nowhere
The Wind from Nowhere
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Ballard tends to write several bks on variations of the same theme. This is the 1st(?) of his mono-ecological-disaster novels - by wch I mean that one ecological phenomenon reaches disastrous proportions & only a small part of the human (& animal & plant-life, etc) population survives. In this case, a wind whips around the earth faster & faster - gradually flattening all but the sturdiest objects. Ballard has usually managed to stay at the forefront of science fiction that addresses problems of human urban living. I like more or less everything that I've read by him - even when I think the ideas & writing are a bit thin, I still appreciate the bks' realtionship to his overall ouvre.
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Ben
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Jan 21, 2008 02:50PM
A minor correction if I may. This is actually the second of the ecological disaster novels (and second published overall). "The Drowned World" preceded it. It's also, in my (and his) opinion, the slightest of the bunch, written to earn a living. I can't blame him. I'd recommend it for completists.
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Darn-nabbit! Well, goodbye all-too-often cruel world. I made a mistake & must pay the price.. [tears running down his cheeks in self-pity] Thanks for the correction! Oddly, on the on-line bibliography of his @ "The Wind from Nowhere" is listed as 1st - but on it's listed as 2nd. On it's also listed as 2nd. At any rate, both novels were from 1962.
Ah, well maybe I'm wrong then, so perhaps I'll go engage in self-flagellation. Which could be fun anyway.I was a bit of a Ballard fanatic for a time, reading most of his novels and short stories. I haven't kept up with his recent work.
I didn't notice a listing in your reviews for A User's Guide to the Millennium, have you read it? It's all essays and reviews. I'll lend you mine sometime if you like.
No, I haven't read it. I take it that it's a more recent bk of Ballard's? I, like you, stopped reading him so intensively after the 1980s. This may seem contrary to my high ratings for him, but then I sortof lost interest in him. He has all sorts of good qualities: he's not a one-trick pony (more like a 6 or 7 trick not-Horse to make a private joke that's really a reference to my new bk) & he has plenty of life-experience to draw from to make sure that his world-view is rich. W/ that sd in his favor, I sometimes find his writing style to be a little shallow. I reckon that contributes to his popularity. Not surprisingly, since you know me, I'm more drawn to complex writing styles. Conventional 'transparency' goes only so far w/ me & then I hunger for greater conceptual obstacle courses.
Ballard was, at one time in my list of greatest SF writers - a list that also included Philip K. Dick, the Strugatsky Brothers, Samuel Delaney, Stanislav Lem, Michel Jeury, & Vladimir Savchenko - w/ vacillating possible membership for Greg Bear, Greg Egan, Robert Anton Wilson, & probably others that I'm not thinking of right now.
Since that time, some of those writers have become a little "been there, done that" for me insofar as I sucked up everything I cd find by them & then got jaded. Lem is someone that I still have a fresh appreciation of, as are others. Dick was great but I burnt out on him. Etc..
