The Drowned World (1962)

The Drowned World (1962)

Author: J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 175

'Free of vegetation, apart from a few drifting clumps of Sargasso weed, the streets and shops had been preserved almost intact, like a reflection in a lake that has somehow lost its original.'

Ballard's first novel, expanded from an earlier magazine novella, is rife with symbolism and connectedness. Set in the year 2145, it explores the reactions of a group of research scientists stationed at a lagoon that in the not-too-distant past was a human populated city, before massive global warming caused rising sea levels.

The environmental extreme is due to increased solar radiation, not, as is often the case in post-apocalyptic sci-fi, a consequence of something that mankind did, but the result is much the same, meaning once-habitable locations are now inhospitable to mankind and are instead home to a burgeoning animal population.

The environmental upheaval has had a peculiar effect on certain species of flora and fauna, causing some plants and reptiles to grow larger than normal.

Crash (1973)

Crash (1973)

Author:  J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 185

"The intimate time and space of a single human being had been fossilized for ever in this web of chromium knives and frosted glass."

Crash is a subversive novel about a film-maker named James Ballard (the same as the author) who meets a deviant named Robert Vaughan. The longer Ballard spends in Vaughan's company the more influenced by him he becomes. He's soon happily entwined in a secret world of car crashes and illicit sex, and as a result his own sexual ideals begin to change dramatically.

Robert Vaughan is a character seen previously in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). He was a perverted weirdo there and he's much the same here. He surrounds himself with like-minded individuals, the reasons for which will become clear the more of the book you read.

Crash (1996)

Crash (1996)

Dir. David Cronenberg

Open marriage couple James and Catherine Ballard (James Spader and Deborah Kara Unger) have an active but unrewarding sex life together. A series of unplanned events introduce and lure the duo into a bizarre subculture of people who fetishise car crashes. The activities undertaken are consensual within the group, but their hidden world is hazardous to our world.

Reading the J.G. Ballard novel (1973) upon which Crash is based wasn't much fun for me, but it was essential to understanding the otherwise impenetrable aspects of the film. Somehow Cronenberg translated the insipid moments into filmic intensity.

He distorts the traditional role of the viewer by putting us too close for comfort, turning viewer into voyeur - a position of distanced participation. It's uncomfortable and I believe the main reason that most people shy away from even discussing the film in public. It's a shame, because it's a powerful work with some outstanding acting, but it'll take a very open-minded person to see past the taboo wall.

The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

Author: J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 184 

'The blitzkriegs will be fought out on the spinal battlefields, in terms of the postures we assume, of our traumas mimetized in the angle of a wall or balcony.'

TAE is one of the finest examples of the English experimental novel that I've ever read. There's no obvious start/middle/end structure. You can flick to any page and start reading to get an immediate feel for the overall style and perspective of the work. In fact, doing just that is something that Ballard recommended.

The thematic merging of sexual excitement, death of celebrity, architecture and the evils of consumer society are explored as only he could, without deference to the social consciousness or exhibiting shame.

It's an obtuse book that'll only begin to make any kind of sense if you're able to adopt the protagonist's point of view and look at your own life like he views his.