Chronopolis

by J.G. Ballard

Nobody has had more influence on the development of modern science fiction than Ballard. Above all, no one has done more to set new standards for sheer technique in this field. He is a man of towering imagination and acknowledged genius at handling the most intricate of plots.

It is an invidious task to choose from such a rich body of work as Ballard's the sixteen finest stories. But here are presented the author's own favorites:

1 - The Voices of Time (1960)
2 - The Drowned Giant (1964)
3 - The Terminal Beach (1964)
4 - Manhole 69 (1957)
5 - Storm-Bird, Storm-Dreamer (1966)
6 - The Sound-Sweep (1959)
7 - Billenium (1961)
8 - Chronopolis (1960)
9 - Build-Up (1957)
10 - The Garden of Time (1962)
11 - End Game (1964)
12 - The Watchtowers (1962)
13 - Now Wakes the Sea (1963)
14 - Zone of Terror (1960)
15 - The Cage of Sand (1962)
16 - Deep End (1961)

No writer has ever written better in this genre; few have equaled these stories. This is a collection to savor and reread.

"I know Ballard has made waves; I know he will not stop; I am most pleased to watch where he is going." - Theodore Sturgeon

J.G. Ballard is a British novelist, writer and critic. As the apostle of the so-called New Wave in SF writing he has had an enormous influence on the development of modern SF. Among his many works, much of which have been outside the realm of SF, are novels such as The Drowned World and The Crystal World and such short story collections as Vermillion Sands and Billenium.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Collections, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy

371 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

James 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".

Reviews

[Ken-ichi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read about half of this before deciding most of the stories were pretty similar: atomic annihilation, sleep as a proxy for death, scientific hubris, etc. Some of them definitely contained compelling concepts (time-based autocracy, anti-time autocracy!) and imagery (giant birds!), but the bogus biology and underlying belief in historical and evolutionary determinism got me down. Each of these stories seems to echo the fear of death within the broader fear of death of the world, of civilizations and ecosystems reaching their end, and it all just feels a bit old fashioned. Like, we survived the Cold War without blowing ourselves up and now we have other fears, like the fear of fear (also a Cold War thing, obviously, so where's it at, J.G.?), and the fear of lost identity, or false identity. Maybe that's why Phillip K. Dick has more currency these days than Ballard. Or is Ballard's other work different?

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of the works of J.G. Ballard, who is an author most people either love of hate. He is part of that (now rather old) "New Wave" of sci fi that tried to inject some literary quality into a genre that was dismissed as juvenile. Along with Samuel Delany, Ballard probably came closest to being accepted as a serious writer by non sci fi fans of anyone in the movement.A lot of his work is strongly influenced by his childhood, which was spent in a Japanese POW camp with other British civilians and was described in his autobiography Empire of the Sun and the Spielberg movie of the same name. Two themes that run through his works are isolation and imprisonment. There is also the interesting sense of disconnectedness from the technological world - even when his stories take place in a future where humanity is exploring the stars, his characters are among those left behind on the dying Earth - which really sets him apart from most sci fi of any period. Finally, what stands out as a theme is that Ballard has what I would call an "artistic eye" for detail: he's interested in images and tableaux, which he describes in terms which can make everyday things seem extraordinary and fantastic. If it is possible to write from the right side of the brain, Ballard has done it.
I read this book either when I was in college, or shortly thereafter (I forget which), but I had forgotten nearly every story that was in here. The one exception was "Build Up," a Kafkaesque experiment about a man in a vast, boundless cityspace who has never seen free, unbounded, space and dreams of flying. That one stayed with me, although I had forgotten some details (including the disappointing "punch line" Ballard tacked onto the end). The one I should have remembered (because it is well known and talked about) was "Terminal Beach," a story about a lonely man living on an atoll that had been used for atomic tests, and his slow descent into a kind of madness. Others came back to me like forgotten dreams as I read them. One example of this was "The Garden of Time," in which a classically Gothic aristocrat and his lovely wife stave off a ravaging horde with flowers that hold time still (but not indefinitely). Also "The Watchtowers," which is a kind of comment on the ways in which the Foucauldian Panopticon is a self-made trap. Most of the other stories follow similar themes, with varying degrees of success, but I suppose this review would be incomplete without mentioning the eponymous story, "Chronopolis." This is a story about a boy about the age Ballard was when he entered the prison camp, who lives in a dying society that has abolished clocks, and learns the secret of controlling people by controlling time. He becomes dedicated to reviving the clocks in the part of the city which has been abandoned due to under-population, but ultimately finds himself in prison as a danger to society. The twist ending on this one is reasonably effective, but also ambiguous, regarding the meaning of freedom.

[Jacob Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great short story collection. At points like Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Ray Bradbury. The one that stuck with me was about a giant who washed up on a beach on the East coast. It gradually becomes a tourist attraction, then as it decomposes people just lose interest and stop caring about it. Seems about right! Also contains a great story about a seemingly infinite underground city.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's death reminded me that I read this collection far back in my youth. Little of it remains in memory, just a few images. I'll find it again sometime.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems that I remember liking this a lot when I read it, but these days I don't remember much about it.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read this in my teenage years. But it left no lasting impression.

[Honesty · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Endgame" and "The Garden of Time" were both easily five stars. The rest of the collection varies.

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really fun, silly read. Set outside a city that collapsed due to its reliance and strict rules based on time, which led to all watches being outlawed. The story centres on a young man with a fascination with watches.

[Craig Hayward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to see JG play with his favorite themes across an array settings with various characters. Some of the short stories are stronger than others, of course. My favorites were Deep End, The Terminal Beach, and The Cage of Sand. Many others of the 16 in this collection were intriguing and effective; I found myself mulling them over for days. Most still feel relevant even though they were originally published over sixty years ago, in the early 1960's. I suppose that's one of the reasons he's considered a master and a seminal figure in science fiction.

[Mark Ford · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of a slog to finish and nothing is too memorable except maybe The Drowned Giant and only because of Love, Death and Robots.

Even that wasn't very a very gripping episode unlike others in the series.

A few of these tales are set at the end of the world or have people going through existential and philosophical shenanigans of one sort or another and it was way beyond my simple pleasures.

I guess I'm just not cut out for Ballard, I've read The Drowned World and though it was very atmospheric and had great prose etc it just wasn't for me.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection. I'm not sure how I feel about some of the set-ups for the stories - iffy possibility? Bad sciebce? Maybe just out of date and not holding up well over time? But still very readable. The author tries to take on some pretty heady ideas even if the underlying science is bad. Then again it's fiction and doesn't try to do more than be philosophical and entertaining. And that is OK.

[Joel Kramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories touches on many of the common themes in Ballard's novels: post nuclear dystopias, environmental disasters, and short science fiction tragedies. It was a good read with interesting ideas.

[Collin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories are very good (the first particularly), but it became so grim that I had to put it down. Great imagery, though.

[Simon Håkansson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read the short story of the same name in an excellent collection called 'The world treasury of science fiction '

[Martin DH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read during Dewey's Readathon 2018.
Found a short story edition of the book. Experienced it to be surrounding a really clever plot. Hope I'll find the full edition soon.

[mtschettar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is good. I probably only read half of them at most but there were some interesting ideas & stories & spins.

But in the end, it didnt really take with me.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 2 out of 5]

For science fiction aficionados, J.G. Ballard is best known as one of the main progenitors of the “New Wave” movement. How best to describe it in a short review? In traditional SF, especially hard SF, the rules of the universe are known, or at least the scientific method can make them legible.
Water set in a freezer with a setting below 32 degrees Fahrenheit will freeze, unless the water is doped with something preventing the reaction.
In the world of the New Wave, the givens in our own world are not a given. It has the trappings of SF, and even has strong and serious scientific considerations. But drugs and subjective states and other impediments are always getting in the way.
I want to say “Chronopolis” is a good introduction to New Wave, but then again I didn’t care for it much. Does that mean I don’t care for New Wave SF, or that I simply don’t care too much for Ballard? I guess I’ll just have to read more—Ballard and New Wave, that is—before making a final decision.
My main problem with this work isn’t its subjectivity. I don’t mind having the rug pulled from beneath my feet, never needed an explanation for Joseph K.’s plight or felt William Burroughs’ cutups needed better sequencing. Rather, it’s the relentless interiority of most of these pieces that’s maddening. Light phosphoresces and coruscates, stars shimmer and seafoam deliquesces. Characters muse and ponder. But nobody—alien or terrestrial—does much of anything.
If you’ll forgive the possible Anglophobia, there’s something very British and midcentury about it. Something halting and discrete, with no point ever being quite made because to make a point would be impolite. It all reminds me of the old Eddie Izzard bit about the typical English film. One man enters a room and the other looks up. “What is it, Sebastian? I’m just arranging matchsticks.”
Then again, I dig Wells and especially Wyndham, so maybe Ballard’s Englishness—albeit by-way of a colonial holding—isn’t the problem.
Still, there are some stories in here that I admire, and one or two I thought were great. The titular “Chronopolis” gave a lot of food for thought, and is perhaps the most conventional and throwback-y of the lot. We tend to think time in a way tyrannizes us, that it’s man’s attempt to measure and apportion the immeasurable. Ballard suggests something else, that life without time might be excruciating, especially for those who remember the concept, however faintly.
Also worthy of any reader’s time was “The Drowned Giant.” The tale, about a giant washed up on a beach, has the quality of a fable. Maria Tatar, in a book about fairytales, quotes Ballard’s words to the effect that the tales he read in childhood had the greatest effect on him. Here we see evidence of that, in a strong story that treats the implausible as so real the reader has no choice but to tag along.
Finally we come to my favorite, “End Game,” a chess story that deserves to be mentioned right up there with Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.” It’s so good in fact that it almost makes reading the whole collection worth it. Almost, mind you.

[Frobisher Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ballard's intense dystopic sci-fi short stories are generally worth a read, and in this collection won't let you down if you want a look into Ballard's dark meditations on spatial and temporal constraints -- the inherent scarcity of physical existence, how modern living pushes us against these constraints constantly, and the paranoia and disorder this leads to.

Hard sci-fi fans might be annoyed by his sometimes very fantastical set-ups, but it might be good to think of these stories as allegorical future fables, mirrors to the insanity of today, rather than as dire warnings of possible futures. It might seem that Ballard is just trying and failing as a trenchant cynic, and predicting futures so dark they are simply impossible, but what is key here are his insights into social psychology and the human condition. He shows us through clarifying extremity the way our lives already operate and how the inescapable absurdity can be deathly oppressive.

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ballard's stories in this book tend to the surreal. Rather than portray a realistic future, they emphasize one alternate reality (a world where clocks are outlawed, where people live in underground cities and have forgotten open space, where picking flowers in a garden can briefly roll back time, where a large part of Florida is covered with Martian sand, and more) and give only enough logistical support to make the scenario plausible. The characters are rarely intrinsically interesting but are made so by the stresses of the situations they deal with. Ballard's writing style suits the need to depict these strange environments, but in the process stories sometimes drag. If you are looking for action stories, look elsewhere.

[Scott Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lord, what a depressing book. The premises of most of the stories are pretty fatalistic: overpopulation, ecological disaster, etc. And the stories don't have much in the way of plot either; they are mostly about men caught up in their environments. And I do mean men. Out of the sixteen stories, there are only a couple with major female characters and at least half of them don't feature any women at all. The stories are well written but they're all a little airless. They would be best taken in single doses rather than reading them all at once.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no author bleaker and, unfortunately, more prescient than Ballard. Great collection here with way more hits than misses.

[Despa Chito · Rating 4 out of 5]

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