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The Complete Short Stories #2
The Complete Short Stories: Volume 2
Librarian note : Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780007245765
The second in a two volume collection of acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.
JG Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain’s most highly regarded and influential novelists. However, during his long career he was also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which show the germination of ideas he used in his longer fiction.
This, the second book in a two-volume collection, offers a platform from which to view Ballard’s other works. Almost all of his novels had their seeds in short stories and this collection provides an extraordinary opportunity to trace the development of one of Britain’s most visionary writers.
The second in a two volume collection of acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.
JG Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain’s most highly regarded and influential novelists. However, during his long career he was also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which show the germination of ideas he used in his longer fiction.
This, the second book in a two-volume collection, offers a platform from which to view Ballard’s other works. Almost all of his novels had their seeds in short stories and this collection provides an extraordinary opportunity to trace the development of one of Britain’s most visionary writers.
775 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
52 people are currently reading
377 people want to read
About the author
J.G. Ballard
469 books4,072 followersJames Graham "J. G." Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Ballard came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) novels such as The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966). In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ballard focused on an eclectic variety of short stories (or "condensed novels") such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which drew closer comparison with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In 1973 the highly controversial novel Crash was published, a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism; the protagonist becomes sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. The story was later adapted into a film of the same name by Canadian director David Cronenberg.
While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.
The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.
The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 8, 2024
Ballard begins to really hit his stride in the late 1960s as he settles into his own warped writing cockpit and surges forward into the distorted oblivion of the 1970s and 80s. There were far fewer ‘duds’ to be found here than among the earlier stories collected in volume one. Of particular interest and enjoyment to me were those focused on the U.S. space program, with which Ballard appears to have had at least a minor obsession, notably in envisioning its potential failures and strange effects on time. These tales set in the overgrown and mostly abandoned environs of Florida’s Cape Kennedy hold a lurid appeal, peopled by unhinged former astronauts and space engineers—gaunt shadowy men leading doomed personal missions that cast a cynical shadow over our ambitious frontier efforts in outer space.
Mallory pressed on toward the Cape, the engine of the motorcycle at full throttle. The tracts of suburban housing unravelled before him, endlessly repeating themselves, the same shopping malls, bars and motels, the same stores and used-car lots that he and Anne had seen in their journey across the continent. He could almost believe he was driving through Florida again, through the hundreds of small towns that merged together, a suburban universe in which these identical liquor stories, car parks and shopping malls formed the building blocks of a strand of urban DNA generated by the nucleus of the space centre. He had driven down this road, across these silent intersections, not for minutes or hours but for years and decades. The unravelling strand covered the entire surface of the globe, and then swept out into space to pave the walls of the universe before it curved back on itself to land here at its departure point at the space centre. Again he passed the overturned truck beside its scattered television sets, again the laundry van in the liquor store window. He would forever pass them, forever cross the same intersection, see the same rusty sign above the same motel cabin…Ballard’s cultural and political satire is also razor-sharp, so deadpan as to be perfectly believable, especially reading it now when so much of what he wrote about has either already come to pass or is on the cusp of occurring. The man's prescience was stunning. It’s regrettable he hasn’t been around to usher us through the age of social media and artificial intelligence, although his treatment of television remains relevant and could just as easily apply to the Internet and social media. Likewise his infamous lampooning of Ronald Reagan unfortunately rings familiar tones at this time of Joe Biden’s notable public faltering. In ‘The Secret History of World War 3,’ Reagan is excavated from retirement for a third term following his successor’s largely unpopular and failed term. However, given the state of the world at the time and the many political challenges facing him, the narrator wonders:
Could even the Reagan presidency cope with a world so askew? Along with my fellow-physicians who had watched the President on television, I seriously doubted it. At this time, in the summer of 1994, Ronald Reagan was a man of eighty-three, showing all the signs of advancing senility. Like many old men, he enjoyed a few minutes each day of modest lucidity, during which he might utter some gnomic remark, and then lapse into a glassy twilight. His eyes were now too blurred to read the teleprompter, but his White House staff took advantage of the hearing aid he had always worn to insert a small speaker, so that he was able to recite his speeches by repeating like a child whatever he heard in his earpiece. The pauses were edited out by the TV networks, but the hazards of remote control were revealed when the President, addressing the Catholic Mothers of America, startled the massed ranks of blue-rinsed ladies by suddenly repeating a studio engineer’s aside: ‘Shift your ass, I gotta take a leak.’ Watching this robotic figure with his eerie smiles and goofy grins, a few people began to ask if the President was brain-dead, or even alive at all.What follows is a hilarious description of the solution to this dilemma concocted by the White House staff in collaboration with the media. As usual, Ballard hits so close to the mark that while you’re laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all, you’re also crying inside because of how near the quick he’s cut, and you know that what he’s dreamed up is either already happening or is about to unfold.
March 27, 2017
At several points, Ballard might use the verb “tottered”, to the point the book might be hurled wallwards. At several points, Ballard might describe an aircraft flying over a sand dune near a derelict beach resort, to the point the book might be hurled wallwards. At several points, Ballard might describe a psychotic character in a time-slip in a derelict beach resort tottering towards a bombed-out aircraft, to the point (see above). Otherwise, Ballard might impress with his inventive and innovative and eventually rather moving short stories.
May 3, 2015
What can I say? The second half of J. G. Ballard's complete short story collection was more interesting and polished than the first half.
Of course, that could mean that I'm biased toward modern literature, I'm getting into his style of writing, or the massive weight of recurring themes served as a firm anchor for me, the reader. Who knows for certain?
I didn't love his words, but I didn't hate them either. I'll be honest. It was a long haul.
On the other hand, I'll always remember how 4 out of 5 stories had either flight or astronauts featured, often including a great time malaise. I think I enjoyed those the best out everything.
There were a few very short stories that did tickle me, though, and both happened to be about Ronald Regan. The short world war III was very funny.
His characters, for the most part, were average. The only ones that stood out strong were the psychopaths, and I'll be honest, they were pretty neat. I think I'll always enjoy the film critic and the guy who decided to stay at home.
Reading this, I've decided, has become a bragging point. Not entirely a labor of love, but still rewarding. I think I can trace a whole slew of repurposed ideas that made it into practically all of Steven Spielburg's films. I finally understand why he took Ballard's book to make Empire of the Sun. He was obviously a huge fan, and it didn't start or end with a single novel.
I don't doubt that Ballard has been a huge influence on many writers, and while it might be a monumental effort to trace back who came up with what first, I think I'll leave things as it is. Someone else can go about that task. I'll just enjoy the experience.
I want to leave everyone with just one impression, at least: The Earth is a balloon, people. Don't pop it and let all the undiluted time flow in. Okay? Okay.
Of course, that could mean that I'm biased toward modern literature, I'm getting into his style of writing, or the massive weight of recurring themes served as a firm anchor for me, the reader. Who knows for certain?
I didn't love his words, but I didn't hate them either. I'll be honest. It was a long haul.
On the other hand, I'll always remember how 4 out of 5 stories had either flight or astronauts featured, often including a great time malaise. I think I enjoyed those the best out everything.
There were a few very short stories that did tickle me, though, and both happened to be about Ronald Regan. The short world war III was very funny.
His characters, for the most part, were average. The only ones that stood out strong were the psychopaths, and I'll be honest, they were pretty neat. I think I'll always enjoy the film critic and the guy who decided to stay at home.
Reading this, I've decided, has become a bragging point. Not entirely a labor of love, but still rewarding. I think I can trace a whole slew of repurposed ideas that made it into practically all of Steven Spielburg's films. I finally understand why he took Ballard's book to make Empire of the Sun. He was obviously a huge fan, and it didn't start or end with a single novel.
I don't doubt that Ballard has been a huge influence on many writers, and while it might be a monumental effort to trace back who came up with what first, I think I'll leave things as it is. Someone else can go about that task. I'll just enjoy the experience.
I want to leave everyone with just one impression, at least: The Earth is a balloon, people. Don't pop it and let all the undiluted time flow in. Okay? Okay.
December 15, 2025
Modestly, he pointed to the elements of his ‘kit’, the film strips, chronograms and pornographic photos, the Magritte reproduction. ‘It’s a machine, of a kind. A time-machine. It’s powered by that empty swimming pool outside. I’m trying to construct a metaphor to bring my wife back to life.” — Myths of the Near Future
-------
56 stories, 775 pages. Ballard's vision is so consistent, the same motifs (air- and spacecraft, widowed clinicians, cameras, beaches) — recapitulating the same themes (time-dilation, mass-media, the veneer of civilization, suburban anomie) that consuming this much of him en bloc feels more like listening to ambient music or gazing into a fractal artwork than reading literature. But these reiterative dream-logics sum to an irresistible analysis of Western culture and society in the twentieth century, one that's sometimes strangely prescient: in 1964's The Illuminated Man, a sketch for his novel The Crystal World, he locates one of three origin sites for the quasi-radioactive force enveloping the globe in the Pripet marshes, just a couple hundred miles from the city of Pripyat a.k.a. Chernobyl. 1977's The Intensive Care Unit describes a Covid-like existence mediated through screens, while The Secret History of WWIII, written in '88, takes us forward in time to the mid-90's, when a senile Reagan is into his third term, his every vital sign monitored obsessively by Americans oblivious to the rapidfire exchange of nukes taking place between their country and the Russians.
Social atomisation is at the heart of so many of these tales; for Ballard, the aviator and the astronaut are emblematic outsider figures, illustrative of technology's antisocialising tendency, like in the melancholy The Man Who Walked On the Moon, in which dissociation from the earth leads to dissociation from the self, the rocket-age severing the guy-lines of our communal reality. Flying in these stories frequently ends in disaster, and our appetite for disaster and morbid spectacle is another preoccupying Ballardian theme. The Air Disaster follows a reporter on his quest for a plane crash site in the Andes, his thirst for death and wreckage ("there should be bodies everywhere, hundreds of cadavers!") driving the natives to provide him with the macabre resolution he devoutly wishes. One Afternoon at Utah Beach, about the ghosts of war, is reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or Lucius Sheperd's later Shades, but draped in the Ballardian imagery of beaches, aviation, and men encouraging their younger wives into infidelity, and the very inevitability of this imagery somehow makes it more effective.
Sometimes it does sail close to self-parody, or maybe that's what it is? In The Enormous Space we read of a suburb built on the site of an abandoned aerodrome, and the opening paragraph of Memories of the Space Age (one of the most haunting and most purely Ballardian tales in the book) reads like a distillation of his entire oeuvre:
All day this strange pilot had flown his antique aeroplane over the abandoned space centre, a frantic machine lost in the silence of Florida. The flapping engine of the old Curtiss biplane woke Dr Mallory soon after dawn, as he lay asleep beside his exhausted wife on the fifth floor of the empty hotel in Titusville. Dreams of the space age had filled the night, memories of white runways as calm as glaciers, now broken by this eccentric aircraft veering around like the fragment of a disturbed mind.
Airplanes, space travel, a medical man, a wife with a problem, abandoned buildings, a tropical location, a disturbed mind: tincture of Ballard, take two drops thrice daily to ease the symptoms of modernity. But another Ballardian trait is control. Just as his medical protagonists seek to bring order to a disordered universe, Ballard never lets his prose run away from him. He's clinically obsessed with form, and many of these stories are formal exercises, drills, mazes, games, more than they are narratives. Answers to a Questionnaire asks the reader to construct their own story around 100 ludic responses, e.g.:
16) Twice a day.
19) My greatest ambition is to turn into a TV programme.
24) With my last money I bought him a prawnburger in the mezzanine cafeteria. He thanked me and, although not carrying a bank card, extracted £100 from a service till on the main concourse.
28) No.
This could, and would in the hands of most authors, absolutely suck, but I laughed a whole bunch and was thinking about it for a day or two after. The 60 Minute Zoom is another formal exercise, an inexorable zoom into a massive resort hotel that surely prefigures the novel High-Rise. The Impossible Man, about a society in which continual organ transplants sustain longevity, is a haunting, cadaverous thought experiment on the nature of mortality and identity.
Ballard is fascinating because his concerns are so obviously rooted in his life, the two defining events of which seem to have been his interment in a Japanese prison camp as a child in Shanghai, and the early death of his wife. So many of these stories are about people seeking, or having thrust upon them, the ability to slow time; so many are overgrown with jeweled (that's B's favourite adjective), rampant, Edenic life; so many are about seeing, cameras, the unreliability or otherwise of the visual. I don't know another writer who spent his whole career quarrying so few seams so rewardingly. If art is finding a form for something inside you to get out then Ballard's stories are exemplary.
-------
56 stories, 775 pages. Ballard's vision is so consistent, the same motifs (air- and spacecraft, widowed clinicians, cameras, beaches) — recapitulating the same themes (time-dilation, mass-media, the veneer of civilization, suburban anomie) that consuming this much of him en bloc feels more like listening to ambient music or gazing into a fractal artwork than reading literature. But these reiterative dream-logics sum to an irresistible analysis of Western culture and society in the twentieth century, one that's sometimes strangely prescient: in 1964's The Illuminated Man, a sketch for his novel The Crystal World, he locates one of three origin sites for the quasi-radioactive force enveloping the globe in the Pripet marshes, just a couple hundred miles from the city of Pripyat a.k.a. Chernobyl. 1977's The Intensive Care Unit describes a Covid-like existence mediated through screens, while The Secret History of WWIII, written in '88, takes us forward in time to the mid-90's, when a senile Reagan is into his third term, his every vital sign monitored obsessively by Americans oblivious to the rapidfire exchange of nukes taking place between their country and the Russians.
Social atomisation is at the heart of so many of these tales; for Ballard, the aviator and the astronaut are emblematic outsider figures, illustrative of technology's antisocialising tendency, like in the melancholy The Man Who Walked On the Moon, in which dissociation from the earth leads to dissociation from the self, the rocket-age severing the guy-lines of our communal reality. Flying in these stories frequently ends in disaster, and our appetite for disaster and morbid spectacle is another preoccupying Ballardian theme. The Air Disaster follows a reporter on his quest for a plane crash site in the Andes, his thirst for death and wreckage ("there should be bodies everywhere, hundreds of cadavers!") driving the natives to provide him with the macabre resolution he devoutly wishes. One Afternoon at Utah Beach, about the ghosts of war, is reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or Lucius Sheperd's later Shades, but draped in the Ballardian imagery of beaches, aviation, and men encouraging their younger wives into infidelity, and the very inevitability of this imagery somehow makes it more effective.
Sometimes it does sail close to self-parody, or maybe that's what it is? In The Enormous Space we read of a suburb built on the site of an abandoned aerodrome, and the opening paragraph of Memories of the Space Age (one of the most haunting and most purely Ballardian tales in the book) reads like a distillation of his entire oeuvre:
All day this strange pilot had flown his antique aeroplane over the abandoned space centre, a frantic machine lost in the silence of Florida. The flapping engine of the old Curtiss biplane woke Dr Mallory soon after dawn, as he lay asleep beside his exhausted wife on the fifth floor of the empty hotel in Titusville. Dreams of the space age had filled the night, memories of white runways as calm as glaciers, now broken by this eccentric aircraft veering around like the fragment of a disturbed mind.
Airplanes, space travel, a medical man, a wife with a problem, abandoned buildings, a tropical location, a disturbed mind: tincture of Ballard, take two drops thrice daily to ease the symptoms of modernity. But another Ballardian trait is control. Just as his medical protagonists seek to bring order to a disordered universe, Ballard never lets his prose run away from him. He's clinically obsessed with form, and many of these stories are formal exercises, drills, mazes, games, more than they are narratives. Answers to a Questionnaire asks the reader to construct their own story around 100 ludic responses, e.g.:
16) Twice a day.
19) My greatest ambition is to turn into a TV programme.
24) With my last money I bought him a prawnburger in the mezzanine cafeteria. He thanked me and, although not carrying a bank card, extracted £100 from a service till on the main concourse.
28) No.
This could, and would in the hands of most authors, absolutely suck, but I laughed a whole bunch and was thinking about it for a day or two after. The 60 Minute Zoom is another formal exercise, an inexorable zoom into a massive resort hotel that surely prefigures the novel High-Rise. The Impossible Man, about a society in which continual organ transplants sustain longevity, is a haunting, cadaverous thought experiment on the nature of mortality and identity.
Ballard is fascinating because his concerns are so obviously rooted in his life, the two defining events of which seem to have been his interment in a Japanese prison camp as a child in Shanghai, and the early death of his wife. So many of these stories are about people seeking, or having thrust upon them, the ability to slow time; so many are overgrown with jeweled (that's B's favourite adjective), rampant, Edenic life; so many are about seeing, cameras, the unreliability or otherwise of the visual. I don't know another writer who spent his whole career quarrying so few seams so rewardingly. If art is finding a form for something inside you to get out then Ballard's stories are exemplary.
September 17, 2023
Obviamente, como ocurre con cualquier colección de relatos, no todos tienen la misma calidad. Pero la sensación general con Ballard es de maestría absoluta.
August 18, 2016
Unfortunately I didn't find this as enjoyable as volume 1. That I read from cover to cover uninterrupted while this vol I found I would read a few stories in between other books, hence the length of time taken. That's not to say that there's anything particularly wrong with it. Ballard's imagination and prescience are present and correct, sometimes exhilaratingly so considering how long ago some of these were written. However some of the recurring themes do become a little tedious in a way that I didn't see in vol 1.
August 15, 2022
The same was not true for the second volume, no bad stories were hidden at the back. The second volume was more jam-packed with amazing stories than the first volume was!
Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome setting in. After 1600 pages, you do feel a little stir crazy. But that's the vibe here anyway. Pure madness distilled into short form fiction.
Men who close the front door of their house and never leave. Women who find themselves in government mandated holiday camps. Chemical spill horticultural explosions. Infinite space stations. Presidents using autocues and losing their grip on their minds so badly they're propped up by television networks.
I mean... If you love Black Mirror's uncanny ability to hit the nail on the head time and time again, you will adore these stories. They're dark, sinister, sharp, timely, thrilling, unnerving, cruel, exaltant...
Hope is a thing that you have to go looking for in his work. It isn't just awarded you like a participation award. Some of the stories are bleak.
All in all. I tabbed almost half the stories here and maybe 1/3 of the ones in volume 1. So it was an excellent ratio and I will absolutely be reading some of those stories many times to help learn how he does it for my own writing.
Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome setting in. After 1600 pages, you do feel a little stir crazy. But that's the vibe here anyway. Pure madness distilled into short form fiction.
Men who close the front door of their house and never leave. Women who find themselves in government mandated holiday camps. Chemical spill horticultural explosions. Infinite space stations. Presidents using autocues and losing their grip on their minds so badly they're propped up by television networks.
I mean... If you love Black Mirror's uncanny ability to hit the nail on the head time and time again, you will adore these stories. They're dark, sinister, sharp, timely, thrilling, unnerving, cruel, exaltant...
Hope is a thing that you have to go looking for in his work. It isn't just awarded you like a participation award. Some of the stories are bleak.
All in all. I tabbed almost half the stories here and maybe 1/3 of the ones in volume 1. So it was an excellent ratio and I will absolutely be reading some of those stories many times to help learn how he does it for my own writing.
April 16, 2021
As this was my first time reading Ballard, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and perhaps it probably wasn't the best place to start with his work. But this was gifted to me years ago and I've finally gotten around to reading it.
I certainly didn't resonate with every story in here and, at almost a whopping 800 pages, some of them, especially the more war-themed ones, did outstay their welcome a bit. But there are a ton of gems in here that I thoroughly enjoyed. The later stories were definitely the best, and leaned more towards what I had expected with Ballard after seeing films like 'Crash' and 'High Rise'. Now I feel like I should really move on to his novels.
Probably won't be reading this again anytime soon. But I'm glad I have it in my collection.
I certainly didn't resonate with every story in here and, at almost a whopping 800 pages, some of them, especially the more war-themed ones, did outstay their welcome a bit. But there are a ton of gems in here that I thoroughly enjoyed. The later stories were definitely the best, and leaned more towards what I had expected with Ballard after seeing films like 'Crash' and 'High Rise'. Now I feel like I should really move on to his novels.
Probably won't be reading this again anytime soon. But I'm glad I have it in my collection.
August 28, 2022
Very disappointed. Vol 1 was very good, though it flagged a little towards the end. I was hoping Vol 2 would be similar, or better, however, for me, it just never picked up the pace. Only a couple of stories were good, the rest were average and a lot, just pretty awful. Such a shame. Such a disappointment.
February 19, 2023
[3.25]
5 stars short stories, in my opinion:
Why I Want to fuck Ronald Reagan
Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown
The 60 Minute Zoom
The Smile
Motel Architecture
Answers to a Questionnaire
Love in a colder climate
The Enormous Space (my favourite)
A Guide to Virtual Death
Even though I liked Volume One a tinsy bit more, this had some interesting stories in terms of structure.
5 stars short stories, in my opinion:
Why I Want to fuck Ronald Reagan
Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown
The 60 Minute Zoom
The Smile
Motel Architecture
Answers to a Questionnaire
Love in a colder climate
The Enormous Space (my favourite)
A Guide to Virtual Death
Even though I liked Volume One a tinsy bit more, this had some interesting stories in terms of structure.
January 19, 2019
Des nouvelles variées et inégales, mais certaines sont absolument géniales, à la fois inventives et visionnaires.
October 25, 2022
Listen. There are too many airplanes. Too many references to the moon landing. Too many psychiatrists. It's amazing.
January 16, 2023
let this man write my life. PLEASE
July 21, 2011
Stop reading this and read more Ballard shorts.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews