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Vermilion Sands
Like a latter-day Palm Springs, Vermillion Sands is a fully automated desert resort designed to fulfill the most exotic whims of the idle rich. But now it languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie stars, solitary impresarios and artistic and literary failures, a place where love and lust pall before the stronger pull of evil.
Contents:
· The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D [Vermillion Sands] · ss F&SF Dec ’67
· Prima Belladonna [Vermillion Sands] · ss Science-Fantasy #20 ’56
· The Screen Game [Vermillion Sands] · nv Fantastic Oct ’63
· The Singing Statues [Vermillion Sands] · ss Fantastic Jul ’62
· Cry Hope, Cry Fury! [Vermillion Sands] · ss F&SF Oct ’67
· Venus Smiles [“Mobile”; Vermillion Sands] · ss Science-Fantasy #23 ’57
· Say Goodbye to the Wind [Vermillion Sands] · ss Fantastic Aug ’70
· Studio 5, The Stars [Vermillion Sands] · nv Science-Fantasy #45 ’61
· The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista [Vermillion Sands] · nv Amazing Mar ’62
Contents:
· The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D [Vermillion Sands] · ss F&SF Dec ’67
· Prima Belladonna [Vermillion Sands] · ss Science-Fantasy #20 ’56
· The Screen Game [Vermillion Sands] · nv Fantastic Oct ’63
· The Singing Statues [Vermillion Sands] · ss Fantastic Jul ’62
· Cry Hope, Cry Fury! [Vermillion Sands] · ss F&SF Oct ’67
· Venus Smiles [“Mobile”; Vermillion Sands] · ss Science-Fantasy #23 ’57
· Say Goodbye to the Wind [Vermillion Sands] · ss Fantastic Aug ’70
· Studio 5, The Stars [Vermillion Sands] · nv Science-Fantasy #45 ’61
· The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista [Vermillion Sands] · nv Amazing Mar ’62
208 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1971
89 people are currently reading
2765 people want to read
About the author
J.G. Ballard
469 books4,079 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 - 30 of 165 reviews
October 29, 2015
Vermilion Sands: A desert resort for artists and wealthy eccentrics
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
J.G. Ballard is best known for his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun (1984), along with his early novels like The Drowned World (1962), The Crystal World (1964), The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974), and High-Rise (1975). But many consider his best work to be his huge catalog of short stories, many of which were pivotal in the New Wave SF movement in the late 60s/early 70s. Ballard’s style may have been suited to the short form, as it plays to his strengths (hallucinatory imagery, bizarre concepts, powerful descriptions) and avoid his weaknesses (lack of empathetic characters, weak plots, unrealistic motivations).
He has published many short story collections, but the publishing gods have seen fit to be kind and provide readers with a single volume, The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, which contains 98 stories (1,200 pages) from throughout his career. Not only is this available in hard copy and Kindle, it is also available for a single credit on Audible, providing 65 hours of thoughtful listening pleasure, read by 5-6 excellent veteran narrators. However, to provide a balanced overview, I will review some of his most famous collections separately.
Vermilion Sands (1971) was first published as a U.S. paperback by Berkley in 1971, and was then published by Cape in the U.K. as a hardback in 1973. It contained the following stories:
"Prima Belladonna" (1956), "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista " (1962), "Cry Hope, Cry Fury!" (1966), "Venus Smiles" (1957), "Studio 5, The Stars" (1961), "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" (1967), "Say Goodbye to the Wind" (1970), "The Screen Game" (1962), "The Singing Statues" (1962)
Sometimes you encounter a book that is intelligent, brilliantly-written, wryly-humorous, hypnotic, and almost completely resistant to description without reducing it to triviality. All the stories here showcase artists of different mediums, faded film stars now dwelling in obscurity, and wealthy eccentrics, all of whom retreat from the larger world into the faded desert community of Vermilion Sands in the America Southwest. The blurb on some of the editions describes it best:
Vermilion Sands is a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfill the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners’ neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.
The themes in the stories are wide-ranging, and feature the most bizarre artistic forms, including delicate operatic singing orchids (“Prima Belladonna”), psychotropic houses that retain the emotions of their owners (“The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista”), paintings that paint themselves (“Cry Hope, Cry Fury!”), a growing metallic sculpture that produces music that drives people to distraction (“Venus Smiles”), automated poetry machines that cause a crisis when they are all vandalized and a publishing deadline looms (“Studio 5, The Stars”), a former pilot who finds a new life as a cloud-sculptor ("The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D"), living fashion that reflects and enhances the emotions of the wearer ("Say Goodbye to the Wind"), a doomed film production where the actors and crew cannot be bothered to film ("The Screen Game"), and a sonic sculpture commissioned by a reclusive film star (“The Sound Sculptures”).
The collection is internally consistent in tone, with a wonderfully languid and ironic view of the strange and sometimes comical lives of the residents of Vermilion Sands. It might be more accurate to call it artistic fantasy than SF, but labels really don’t do it justice. Instead, I suggest you should read it for yourself. You will not be disappointed.
Overall, Vermilion Sands contains J.G. Ballard’s most virtuoso and light-hearted writing. Unlike much of his darker, melancholy works about lonely astronauts, despondent scientists, and troubled adventurers, there is a sense of playfulness and moments of outright humor. It is also the most unique depiction of fantastical future art forms I have ever encountered, and combined with the decadent and desolate desert backdrop of this strange community with its sand yachts and living houses, it promises to be an unforgettable reading experience.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
J.G. Ballard is best known for his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun (1984), along with his early novels like The Drowned World (1962), The Crystal World (1964), The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974), and High-Rise (1975). But many consider his best work to be his huge catalog of short stories, many of which were pivotal in the New Wave SF movement in the late 60s/early 70s. Ballard’s style may have been suited to the short form, as it plays to his strengths (hallucinatory imagery, bizarre concepts, powerful descriptions) and avoid his weaknesses (lack of empathetic characters, weak plots, unrealistic motivations).
He has published many short story collections, but the publishing gods have seen fit to be kind and provide readers with a single volume, The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, which contains 98 stories (1,200 pages) from throughout his career. Not only is this available in hard copy and Kindle, it is also available for a single credit on Audible, providing 65 hours of thoughtful listening pleasure, read by 5-6 excellent veteran narrators. However, to provide a balanced overview, I will review some of his most famous collections separately.
Vermilion Sands (1971) was first published as a U.S. paperback by Berkley in 1971, and was then published by Cape in the U.K. as a hardback in 1973. It contained the following stories:
"Prima Belladonna" (1956), "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista " (1962), "Cry Hope, Cry Fury!" (1966), "Venus Smiles" (1957), "Studio 5, The Stars" (1961), "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" (1967), "Say Goodbye to the Wind" (1970), "The Screen Game" (1962), "The Singing Statues" (1962)
Sometimes you encounter a book that is intelligent, brilliantly-written, wryly-humorous, hypnotic, and almost completely resistant to description without reducing it to triviality. All the stories here showcase artists of different mediums, faded film stars now dwelling in obscurity, and wealthy eccentrics, all of whom retreat from the larger world into the faded desert community of Vermilion Sands in the America Southwest. The blurb on some of the editions describes it best:
Vermilion Sands is a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfill the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners’ neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.
The themes in the stories are wide-ranging, and feature the most bizarre artistic forms, including delicate operatic singing orchids (“Prima Belladonna”), psychotropic houses that retain the emotions of their owners (“The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista”), paintings that paint themselves (“Cry Hope, Cry Fury!”), a growing metallic sculpture that produces music that drives people to distraction (“Venus Smiles”), automated poetry machines that cause a crisis when they are all vandalized and a publishing deadline looms (“Studio 5, The Stars”), a former pilot who finds a new life as a cloud-sculptor ("The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D"), living fashion that reflects and enhances the emotions of the wearer ("Say Goodbye to the Wind"), a doomed film production where the actors and crew cannot be bothered to film ("The Screen Game"), and a sonic sculpture commissioned by a reclusive film star (“The Sound Sculptures”).
The collection is internally consistent in tone, with a wonderfully languid and ironic view of the strange and sometimes comical lives of the residents of Vermilion Sands. It might be more accurate to call it artistic fantasy than SF, but labels really don’t do it justice. Instead, I suggest you should read it for yourself. You will not be disappointed.
Overall, Vermilion Sands contains J.G. Ballard’s most virtuoso and light-hearted writing. Unlike much of his darker, melancholy works about lonely astronauts, despondent scientists, and troubled adventurers, there is a sense of playfulness and moments of outright humor. It is also the most unique depiction of fantastical future art forms I have ever encountered, and combined with the decadent and desolate desert backdrop of this strange community with its sand yachts and living houses, it promises to be an unforgettable reading experience.
January 28, 2023
Collected shortly after The Atrocity Exhibition, though largely written long before, this selection of stories mirrors its cohesive collage-assemblage approach. Here, the unifier is a setting and tone, that of a fading resort community where techno-decadent heights of the past rich and famous tenants cast long and eerie echoes over those that move in, ten years later during an unclear economic limbo called The Recess, in their wake. Mostly longer stories, so much time to build up their shifting oddity. I wasn't sure I would be as into the earlier works here, but they actually seem to hold consistent. Despite having been composed over 15 years with four or five novels and possibly hundreds of other stories in between, the story cycle that makes up this volume holds together quite well. May actually be one of Ballard's better works, and I almost invariably prefer novels to collections, which is a testament to the focus and singularity of purpose here. Are his other collections so well-curated?
June 26, 2019
Possibly my favourite Ballard book. It might not be as important as *The Atrocity Exhibition* or *Crash!* in terms of pushing the overfamiliar Ballardian sales patter that the future is already here, that we have adapted to the savage geometries (the motorway overpass, the multiple pile-up) of the modern world to the point where the natural world is now ‘unnatural’ to us; but instead there’s a wistfulness and a wit (exceptionally dry) on display here that’s very much to my taste. For once, Ballard’s penchant for repetition, for riffs on the same themes and language, works beautifully.
The desert resort of Vermilion Sands is the ultimate paradise for creative slackers, where singing sculptures take root and grow like plants; where 'psychotropic' houses react to the moods of their owners, sometimes catastrophically; where poetry is written by computers and clothes are ‘alive’ and temperamental; where sands rays glide on the thermal rollers that travel across the fused quartz beaches; and, most magnificently, where glider pilots sculpt the clouds with sprays of silver iodide into giant fluffy seahorses and unicorns. Indeed, the opening story, ‘The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D’, is one of my favourites by any author.
The desert resort of Vermilion Sands is the ultimate paradise for creative slackers, where singing sculptures take root and grow like plants; where 'psychotropic' houses react to the moods of their owners, sometimes catastrophically; where poetry is written by computers and clothes are ‘alive’ and temperamental; where sands rays glide on the thermal rollers that travel across the fused quartz beaches; and, most magnificently, where glider pilots sculpt the clouds with sprays of silver iodide into giant fluffy seahorses and unicorns. Indeed, the opening story, ‘The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D’, is one of my favourites by any author.
August 14, 2022
It's both a great weakness and great strength of short story collections that they usually contain stories from a multitude of settings. Each story has to establish the location, the feel, the tone of the world being explored, which can be great when each one does so well, and draining for the reader when they don't. If the author elects, however, to set each story in the same place or world, then the sense of place in the stories can be built slowly (and eventually taken as a given), at the risk of the reader tiring of the same locale.
Vermilion Sands is among the latter, and its fascinating setting is a strong thread between a series of stories that begin with masterly skill before eventually stumbling a little in the parching desert heat.
When they're good, though, the stories here are very, very good. Ballard was a writer of quite extraordinary imagination, and his works such as The Drowned World and The Island are stunningly inventive. Flashes of that genius can be spotted in this collection.
The first story in the collection - The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D is a genuine pearl, a short story that exemplifies the best in the form and will sticks in your memory for years. After reading it, and the two following stories, I was telling all my friends to put Vermilion Sands on their reading lists, that this was classic Ballard at his best. The second story - where florist with a shop full of singing plants meets a woman whose voice sets them into a melodic frenzy - is almost equally rewarding, and both perfectly establish the strangeness and enticingly down-at-heel decadence of Vermilion Sands.
And it is a hell of a setting. Vermilion Sands is a Palm Springs-style holiday town, once the place to be seen for the rich and famous, that sits aside a great lake of sand, whose sandy tides and barbed sand rays wash against the town's endless beaches. The sand lake is a treacherous thing, full of reefs and dangers, sailed by wheeled yachts that seek it's mysteries. The fact that the lake is sand rather than water is never questioned, its strangeness just part of the odd, almost magical realism of the nearby town.
And it is very odd. Sonic sculptures play eerie music through echoing mansions, the keening of strange musical plants floats across the desert, houses that twist and grow and adapt according the moods and character of their owners lie abandoned to the creeping sands. Into this setting Ballard brings a cast of flawed characters, some running from problems, others washed up in a decaying holiday town and pinned to the spot by ennui, others struggling with art, love and obsession.
The first three stories, balance the fantastic and the personal in fascinating ways, and then... things get a little samey. A mysterious but wounded woman arrives in Vermilion Sands and attracts the attention of (an invariably) male protagonist. Some oddness happens, and the woman leaves/absconds/abandons the man who has become her lover.
The setting never tires, and nor does Ballard's inventiveness, but the mystery woman device does, and the stories suffer a little for it. By the final story I was starting to tire a little, leaning a little on the memories of the earlier stories to get me through.
Overall though, this is a fantastic collection, one that is worthy of a read, even only if you read the first half. If you aren't up for even that, do yourself a favor and read The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D. It's a masterclass of a short story.
3.5 Mysterious women (who simply must flee town at the first opportunity) out of five.
P.S. As a stand-alone story The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D gets the full five mysterious women out of five.
Vermilion Sands is among the latter, and its fascinating setting is a strong thread between a series of stories that begin with masterly skill before eventually stumbling a little in the parching desert heat.
When they're good, though, the stories here are very, very good. Ballard was a writer of quite extraordinary imagination, and his works such as The Drowned World and The Island are stunningly inventive. Flashes of that genius can be spotted in this collection.
The first story in the collection - The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D is a genuine pearl, a short story that exemplifies the best in the form and will sticks in your memory for years. After reading it, and the two following stories, I was telling all my friends to put Vermilion Sands on their reading lists, that this was classic Ballard at his best. The second story - where florist with a shop full of singing plants meets a woman whose voice sets them into a melodic frenzy - is almost equally rewarding, and both perfectly establish the strangeness and enticingly down-at-heel decadence of Vermilion Sands.
And it is a hell of a setting. Vermilion Sands is a Palm Springs-style holiday town, once the place to be seen for the rich and famous, that sits aside a great lake of sand, whose sandy tides and barbed sand rays wash against the town's endless beaches. The sand lake is a treacherous thing, full of reefs and dangers, sailed by wheeled yachts that seek it's mysteries. The fact that the lake is sand rather than water is never questioned, its strangeness just part of the odd, almost magical realism of the nearby town.
And it is very odd. Sonic sculptures play eerie music through echoing mansions, the keening of strange musical plants floats across the desert, houses that twist and grow and adapt according the moods and character of their owners lie abandoned to the creeping sands. Into this setting Ballard brings a cast of flawed characters, some running from problems, others washed up in a decaying holiday town and pinned to the spot by ennui, others struggling with art, love and obsession.
The first three stories, balance the fantastic and the personal in fascinating ways, and then... things get a little samey. A mysterious but wounded woman arrives in Vermilion Sands and attracts the attention of (an invariably) male protagonist. Some oddness happens, and the woman leaves/absconds/abandons the man who has become her lover.
The setting never tires, and nor does Ballard's inventiveness, but the mystery woman device does, and the stories suffer a little for it. By the final story I was starting to tire a little, leaning a little on the memories of the earlier stories to get me through.
Overall though, this is a fantastic collection, one that is worthy of a read, even only if you read the first half. If you aren't up for even that, do yourself a favor and read The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D. It's a masterclass of a short story.
3.5 Mysterious women (who simply must flee town at the first opportunity) out of five.
P.S. As a stand-alone story The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D gets the full five mysterious women out of five.
August 12, 2014
This is Ballard amped up to eleven. The surreal here is worn like a badge. Direct reference is made throughout to his most obvious touchpoint - Dali. Repetition defines this collection. The same riffs, images, even scenarios, recur; seemingly to cement the impression that Vermilion Sands is self-perpetuating. Latent urges manifest themselves in the physical world. Clothes reveal the inner psyche, sonic sculptures replay voices which mean nothing and everything, and the fabric of the living spaces warps and twists to reflect distilled memory and untapped appetites.
The women whose focus these stories are almost exclusively upon are unknowable creatures driven by selfish desires; duplicitous, and either neurotic or manipulative, or both. This is the male gaze reduced to the raw. There is something mesmeric about the cartoonish manner with which these characters are drawn, as if to accentuate the altered state underpinning the materializing subconscious landscape. I’m reminded of a PS3 game called Deadly Premonition which is similarly episodic and repeats itself endlessly. Made by someone obsessed with Twin Peaks, but getting things just a little off, it includes sadistic and voyeuristic killings of women which I should find appalling. There is, however, a very real sense of unease in the male anima which warrants addressing. This is echoed throughout Vermilion Sands. This collection could be viewed as misogynistic but I think that over simplifies what is happening here. The reality on offer here is a construct, a canvas for the male relator. It is from him these vacuous beings emerge, and like everything created in this world they are a telegram from the soul.
Vermilion Sands is ultimately defined by it’s borders and limitations. As a collection it most probably would have made a better novel, but pick any one story and it’s an endless feast. There is a road from this place and I imagine those who leave to reach the outer limits and dissolve into the paint soaked ether.
The women whose focus these stories are almost exclusively upon are unknowable creatures driven by selfish desires; duplicitous, and either neurotic or manipulative, or both. This is the male gaze reduced to the raw. There is something mesmeric about the cartoonish manner with which these characters are drawn, as if to accentuate the altered state underpinning the materializing subconscious landscape. I’m reminded of a PS3 game called Deadly Premonition which is similarly episodic and repeats itself endlessly. Made by someone obsessed with Twin Peaks, but getting things just a little off, it includes sadistic and voyeuristic killings of women which I should find appalling. There is, however, a very real sense of unease in the male anima which warrants addressing. This is echoed throughout Vermilion Sands. This collection could be viewed as misogynistic but I think that over simplifies what is happening here. The reality on offer here is a construct, a canvas for the male relator. It is from him these vacuous beings emerge, and like everything created in this world they are a telegram from the soul.
Vermilion Sands is ultimately defined by it’s borders and limitations. As a collection it most probably would have made a better novel, but pick any one story and it’s an endless feast. There is a road from this place and I imagine those who leave to reach the outer limits and dissolve into the paint soaked ether.
June 15, 2019
‘Vermilion Sands’, de J.G. Ballard, recoge nueve relatos escritos entre 1956 y 1970. Todos están ambientados en el sugerente lugar del título, una ciudad de vacaciones para famosos, artistas y cineastas, un lugar onírico, casi una quimera. Se trata de una ciudad y una geografía salidas de la mente de Ballard, donde existen mares de arena navegados por barcos con ruedas, arrecifes de piedra y rayas que vuelan por dichos mares. A lo largo de las páginas de esta antología, nos encontraremos con más maravillas, como ropas vivas y casas psicotrópicas que absorben las emociones de sus inquilinos.
Estos son los nueve relatos incluidos:
-Los escultores de nubes de Coral D.
-Prima Belladonna.
-El juego de los biombos.
-Las estatuas cantantes.
-Grito de esperanza, grito de furia.
-Venus sonríe.
-Dile adiós al viento.
-Estudio 5, Las Estrellas.
-Los mil sueños de Stellavista.
Sin duda, un libro fascinante.
Estos son los nueve relatos incluidos:
-Los escultores de nubes de Coral D.
-Prima Belladonna.
-El juego de los biombos.
-Las estatuas cantantes.
-Grito de esperanza, grito de furia.
-Venus sonríe.
-Dile adiós al viento.
-Estudio 5, Las Estrellas.
-Los mil sueños de Stellavista.
Sin duda, un libro fascinante.
May 28, 2025
Vermilion Sands is one of the closest literary approximations of music I’ve encountered. As a composer, I’ve always felt music to be our most abstract and immersive art form—and Ballard comes close to capturing that abstraction with language. His ability to evoke a kind of synesthetic ambience, to suggest tone and timbre through prose, is deeply impressive and demonstrates serious talent and craft.
Beyond the quality of the prose—which is more fluid and less ornamental than in some of his earlier novels—these stories function as an exercise in atmosphere. Like Peake’s Gormenghast, Vermilion Sands aims to completely absorb the reader, to dissolve the world outside and lure us into a dreamlike state of suspension. It’s difficult to convey the texture of this book without experiencing it firsthand. The frequent comparisons to Dalí are warranted. I would include that Vermilion Sands is a Dalí painting emotionally interpreted by Fellini, Bergman, and Tarkovsky.
Though it’s often described as a fix-up, there is a clear emotional and symbolic coherence that binds the stories. They echo one another—not only in theme and setting, but in psychological tone. I won’t unpack this in full here, but there’s a clear thread of Jungian symbolism, especially the emergence of the anima. These are stories about entropy rising from the subconscious, about men encountering the entropic feminine as force, figure, and fate. In that sense, Vermilion Sands operates as a fractured hero’s journey, played out across a landscape where art beautifully decays into desire and memory glows like a heat haze.
Beyond the quality of the prose—which is more fluid and less ornamental than in some of his earlier novels—these stories function as an exercise in atmosphere. Like Peake’s Gormenghast, Vermilion Sands aims to completely absorb the reader, to dissolve the world outside and lure us into a dreamlike state of suspension. It’s difficult to convey the texture of this book without experiencing it firsthand. The frequent comparisons to Dalí are warranted. I would include that Vermilion Sands is a Dalí painting emotionally interpreted by Fellini, Bergman, and Tarkovsky.
Though it’s often described as a fix-up, there is a clear emotional and symbolic coherence that binds the stories. They echo one another—not only in theme and setting, but in psychological tone. I won’t unpack this in full here, but there’s a clear thread of Jungian symbolism, especially the emergence of the anima. These are stories about entropy rising from the subconscious, about men encountering the entropic feminine as force, figure, and fate. In that sense, Vermilion Sands operates as a fractured hero’s journey, played out across a landscape where art beautifully decays into desire and memory glows like a heat haze.
November 30, 2020
What makes this collection is the destination, the locale, the atmosphere - it's a futuristic vision of a Dali painting within an apocalyptic Key West / Las Vegas wasteland. Stingrays fly the red deserts, gem-encrusted scorpions burrow in the windswept sand, poetry machines go haywire with an ancient curse, and singing statues haunt the shorelines. Yet it is repetition of the character struggle between the wayward artist/poet man and the wealthy murderous muse that becomes one-dimensional after a while. Still, this doesn't fully detract this collection's power, especially during these Covid blues when we readers need to get away to a strange, wonderful place. This book achieves that journey.
March 1, 2019
A lesser known work but full of ideas and abandoned ennui, Vermillion Sands strikes me like surrealism in purgatory. A thriving tourism destination full of movie studios and strange discos, morphing mansions and old movie stars. Each chapter is like a short story set in a landscape of affluence and decay. Ballard is in full command of his prose and ideas and it is a striking work written between "Atrocity Exhibition" and "Crash" that sets the tone for "Super-Cannes" with all the Ballardian dystopia.
January 1, 2022
Classicone. Forse non una delle cose migliori di Ballard, ma sicuramente una delle più suggestive.
August 16, 2025
Vermilion Sands collects some of J.G. Ballard's earliest short fiction, including the very first story he published ("Prima Belladonna") way back in 1956. All of the stories are set in the fictional titular locale, a sort of hallucinatory Palm Springs that the author describes as an "exotic suburb of my mind". Most of the stories occur during the Recess, "that world slump of boredom, lethargy and high summer which carried us all so blissfully through ten unforgettable years." The residents of Vermilion Sands are wealthy, idle, and self-indulgent. Many of them are former celebrities whose day has passed.
For any reader familiar with Ballard's work, the setting is generally familiar, and there is a considerable amount of repetition across these nine stories, so much so that a few of them are almost the exact same narrative with some names changed. Around the middle of the book, that repetition can sap some of the reader's enthusiasm, but it can also allow the reader to enter something like the dream state that Ballard's protagonists mill about in.
These stories enmesh their characters in a world of organic and highly personalized technology, where functional items (such as clothing and built structures) have organic characteristics, and are responsive to human moods and behaviors. Art collected by the well-heeled residents of Vermilion Sands is not static, but is endlessly mutable and even capable of emitting song. Some of the metallic artworks are capable of growth, by "rapidly synthesizing an allotropic form of ferrous oxide...a purely physical rearrangement of the constituents of rust." (quote from the story "Venus Smiles").
That quote points at something fundamental to these stories, which is also found throughout Ballard's body of fiction: humanity is capable of creating amazing technologies, but is not always capable of understanding the true potential and best uses of those technologies (hence the significant inclusion of the word "rust"). A "psychotropic" house can re-structure itself based on the personalities of the inhabitants, but that also means that it can become malevolent towards those same inhabitants. Sonic sculptures can make beautiful music, but they can also emit painfully disagreeable sounds that are far from soothing.
Ballard was never interested in the evolution of specific technologies, since he was much more concerned with human experiences shaped by those advancements. But reading these stories in 2025, it's hard not to make a connection to artificial intelligence (AI), a rapidly evolving set of tools that hold immense promise, and yet are already being misused and abused in a startling variety of ways.
I'm not suggesting that Ballard was somehow forecasting the arrival of AI in the stories contained in Vermilion Sands, but his achievement is to suggest that the march of science and technology is not exclusively benign, especially when the humans that create and utilize those wonders are so very imperfect. The listlessness endemic to the population of Vermilion Sands is a symptom of the inability to integrate all of the incredible potential that surrounds those weary souls into a culture and a society worth living in. From that point of view, these stories are every bit as relevant today as they were when J.G. Ballard started writing them almost seventy years ago, and undoubtedly they'll remain relevant far into the future.
For any reader familiar with Ballard's work, the setting is generally familiar, and there is a considerable amount of repetition across these nine stories, so much so that a few of them are almost the exact same narrative with some names changed. Around the middle of the book, that repetition can sap some of the reader's enthusiasm, but it can also allow the reader to enter something like the dream state that Ballard's protagonists mill about in.
These stories enmesh their characters in a world of organic and highly personalized technology, where functional items (such as clothing and built structures) have organic characteristics, and are responsive to human moods and behaviors. Art collected by the well-heeled residents of Vermilion Sands is not static, but is endlessly mutable and even capable of emitting song. Some of the metallic artworks are capable of growth, by "rapidly synthesizing an allotropic form of ferrous oxide...a purely physical rearrangement of the constituents of rust." (quote from the story "Venus Smiles").
That quote points at something fundamental to these stories, which is also found throughout Ballard's body of fiction: humanity is capable of creating amazing technologies, but is not always capable of understanding the true potential and best uses of those technologies (hence the significant inclusion of the word "rust"). A "psychotropic" house can re-structure itself based on the personalities of the inhabitants, but that also means that it can become malevolent towards those same inhabitants. Sonic sculptures can make beautiful music, but they can also emit painfully disagreeable sounds that are far from soothing.
Ballard was never interested in the evolution of specific technologies, since he was much more concerned with human experiences shaped by those advancements. But reading these stories in 2025, it's hard not to make a connection to artificial intelligence (AI), a rapidly evolving set of tools that hold immense promise, and yet are already being misused and abused in a startling variety of ways.
I'm not suggesting that Ballard was somehow forecasting the arrival of AI in the stories contained in Vermilion Sands, but his achievement is to suggest that the march of science and technology is not exclusively benign, especially when the humans that create and utilize those wonders are so very imperfect. The listlessness endemic to the population of Vermilion Sands is a symptom of the inability to integrate all of the incredible potential that surrounds those weary souls into a culture and a society worth living in. From that point of view, these stories are every bit as relevant today as they were when J.G. Ballard started writing them almost seventy years ago, and undoubtedly they'll remain relevant far into the future.
April 10, 2017
J.G. Ballard is one of the most unique, strange writers I've ever read. The first story of his that I read was The Drowned World, which pictures a world that is sinking under water. He wrote that in 1962 and it was one of his earliest books. I next read, The Wind from Nowhere, which pictures mankind forced to live underground to avoid the ever increasing winds that scour the Earth's surface. Even those stories portray his unique writing style, his moodiness, his ability to describe the settings he is trying to picture.
Since then I've read High-rise, Crash, Hello America, etc. Some of them are somewhat inaccessible; you are an observer in these strange worlds or situations that he is describing. But, even with them, you have to find out what will happen to the people he places in such disturbing surroundings.
Vermillion Sands was written in 1971 and is a collection of Ballard's short stories. They all portray the decaying life of artists and rich people living in the area of Vermillion Sands. It's another strange futuristic world; a desert sea, sand rays, musical sand towers, etc. Fascinating and Ballard sort of enfolds you in the life and setting. Artists make clothing from bio materials that have a life of their own. Poets no longer write their own poetry, but use machines to draw themes and words to create poetry and then set out the parameters for people to read them. Artists soar to the skies to create art from the cumulus clouds that float above them. Rich people sail the sand seas in sail ships.
It's a fascinating scene and the stories that surround these moody settings are also interesting, somewhat emotionless, but still keep you reading to see how they resolve. Another interesting work from Ballard.
Since then I've read High-rise, Crash, Hello America, etc. Some of them are somewhat inaccessible; you are an observer in these strange worlds or situations that he is describing. But, even with them, you have to find out what will happen to the people he places in such disturbing surroundings.
Vermillion Sands was written in 1971 and is a collection of Ballard's short stories. They all portray the decaying life of artists and rich people living in the area of Vermillion Sands. It's another strange futuristic world; a desert sea, sand rays, musical sand towers, etc. Fascinating and Ballard sort of enfolds you in the life and setting. Artists make clothing from bio materials that have a life of their own. Poets no longer write their own poetry, but use machines to draw themes and words to create poetry and then set out the parameters for people to read them. Artists soar to the skies to create art from the cumulus clouds that float above them. Rich people sail the sand seas in sail ships.
It's a fascinating scene and the stories that surround these moody settings are also interesting, somewhat emotionless, but still keep you reading to see how they resolve. Another interesting work from Ballard.
September 30, 2012
I'm genuinely surprised by the number of positive reviews.
This is a book of short stories, each with essentially the same characters (same in personality and role in the story, not in identity, but this distinction hardly matters) and plot. The characters and plot aren't even interesting.
There's a woman who at one point was beautiful but has lost her beauty but can't get over it, there's the narrator who falls in love with said woman, and then said woman spurns the narrator in an evil way. Usually the beautiful woman is also very clearly mad which never seems to put the narrator off her. There's usually some kind of melancholy sci-fi technology, like murderous (because they're sad for some reason?) musical plants, and murderous houses, and murderous clouds... you get the idea.
Every single story is like this. If this doesn't sound cliched and ridiculous to you, I suppose you may enjoy it.
His writing is just... bad. He uses the same adjectives in pretty much every story, and everything seems to remind him of Hieronymus Bosch (he literally says this 3 times in the whole collection) or Greta Garbo.
This is a book of short stories, each with essentially the same characters (same in personality and role in the story, not in identity, but this distinction hardly matters) and plot. The characters and plot aren't even interesting.
There's a woman who at one point was beautiful but has lost her beauty but can't get over it, there's the narrator who falls in love with said woman, and then said woman spurns the narrator in an evil way. Usually the beautiful woman is also very clearly mad which never seems to put the narrator off her. There's usually some kind of melancholy sci-fi technology, like murderous (because they're sad for some reason?) musical plants, and murderous houses, and murderous clouds... you get the idea.
Every single story is like this. If this doesn't sound cliched and ridiculous to you, I suppose you may enjoy it.
His writing is just... bad. He uses the same adjectives in pretty much every story, and everything seems to remind him of Hieronymus Bosch (he literally says this 3 times in the whole collection) or Greta Garbo.
November 26, 2009
If I could spend a weekend in any science fiction world it would be Vermilion Sands. I would not even have to think twice about it. These linked short stories are like jewels that are perfectly arranged to look like they were scattered at random. They are like "Last Year at Marienbad" meets Jack Vance's Dying Earth.
May 17, 2011
J.G. Ballard makes me uncomfortable. In computer animation there is the concept of an uncanny valley. We empathise with and find aesthetically pleasing objects that have human qualities, up until the point that they come close to appearing completely human. It's at this point, where we fixate on the not-human qualities - as with cyborgs, avatars, virtual pop stars - that we reject them. Ballard mines an uncanny valley of psychology, not where the physical appearance of an object is too human, but where its desires and behaviours are. Living clothes that sheathe and caress the wearer. Homes that sigh, breathe, and murder. Metal sculptures that sing symphonies and grow endlessly, spurred on by an ineluctable survival instinct. In Vermilion Sands, the inanimate encroaches upon the world of the animate. It's no accident that David Cronenberg turned out to be the perfect director for Crash: with films like Naked Lunch and Videodrome in his oeuvre, he and Ballard share a lot in common. They share a tendency to marry the erotic with things that slither and scuttle, and it's an uncomfortable yet compelling blend.
In Vermilion Sands every antagonist is an alluring woman: sometimes helpless, sometimes a saviour, sometimes, as in the final story, an oppressive, animate memory, but it is always a woman, and usually a femme fatale, that motivates action. I'm not sure why. For a book that explores lust and desire in a deserted desert playground for the rich, there is very little sex. I find I hard to say that I enjoyed the stories: their pacing was a little slow for my tastes, but I enjoyed the inventiveness and imagination on display, and in particular Ballard's pitch perfect takes on the future of art and fashion, where the techniques and materials may be fantastical but the characteristics and attitudes of the artists and art patrons are very familiar.
In Vermilion Sands every antagonist is an alluring woman: sometimes helpless, sometimes a saviour, sometimes, as in the final story, an oppressive, animate memory, but it is always a woman, and usually a femme fatale, that motivates action. I'm not sure why. For a book that explores lust and desire in a deserted desert playground for the rich, there is very little sex. I find I hard to say that I enjoyed the stories: their pacing was a little slow for my tastes, but I enjoyed the inventiveness and imagination on display, and in particular Ballard's pitch perfect takes on the future of art and fashion, where the techniques and materials may be fantastical but the characteristics and attitudes of the artists and art patrons are very familiar.
March 30, 2022
Ballad presents some unique and ultimately strange ideas in this collection. He doesn't give much background to his unique inventions leaving the reader a little confused and wondering if what their imagination came up matches what was in Ballard's mind.
**Moved this from 3-star to 5-start when I re-read. It's a great companion with similar themes and style to novels Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.
**Moved this from 3-star to 5-start when I re-read. It's a great companion with similar themes and style to novels Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.
March 19, 2019
In my opinion, taken as a whole, this collection is Ballard's best work. Imaginative, sometimes melancholy, often playful, frequently ironic, and (unlike some of his other works) never drawn out excessively. This is perhaps the only Ballard world I'd like to inhabit - cautiously. It is telling that Ballard describes the highway shoulders near Vermilion Sands as being littered with souvenirs and artworks discarded from the car windows of departing visitors.
May 17, 2018
Although incredibly imaginative and weird, and certainly among the pioneering works in the vanguard of cutting edge new wave speculative fiction of the 1960's, I found this collection too sleepy for my tastes and only got through the first four of the eight stories. These read like a study in some of the wonderfully absurd, semi-sentient, forms which future art, architecture and music evolve and fuse into.
May 2, 2022
The best of these stories are just amazing. This & "Empire of the Sun" are my two favorite Ballards. Not to be missed! I mean it.
OOP but used copies are easily found. No Kindle that I saw.
Ballard of course is long gone (1930-2009). RIP ♰
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._B...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermili... -- lots of intriguing, new-to-me stuff here.
OOP but used copies are easily found. No Kindle that I saw.
Ballard of course is long gone (1930-2009). RIP ♰
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._B...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermili... -- lots of intriguing, new-to-me stuff here.
March 5, 2019
All of the stories were exactly the same and that story is ‘I was some sort of artist and then the most beautiful and terrifying and inscrutable woman with blue hair came and interfered with my art and then disappeared or died and that’s how it goes in VERMILION SANDS. Also there are flying stingrays.’
March 31, 2013
Repetitive - after yet another story about yet another vain and insane yet beautiful woman, I ended up resorting to reading the Mills & Boon books in the place I was staying just for a bit of a change. Ballard, you bored me
August 15, 2016
Surrealist, melancholic and unsettling. An important literary achievement. Unforgettable.
June 13, 2024
Ballard's vision for the future of leisure delivers one of my favorite SF settings I've ever encountered: Vermilion Sands-- resort town and madhouse. One part Palm Springs, a dash of the Mojave, throw in whatever Italian palazzos and Greek villas you have on hand and truck in the white sands from Ballard's beloved beaches of Salvador Dali and you get something like the backdrop for this fixup novel.
In the author introduction, Ballard says that Vermilion Sands is not only his guess as to what the future will actually look like, but it's also a place he would be happy to live. The surrealist landscape pays direct homage to Ballard's appreciation of surrealist art. The singing coral formations, the flying Manta Ray caves, the sentient clothing and breathing houses are all wildly inventive, visually evocative, and are freighted with subconscious observations from the sun bleached celebrity brain.
This is a resort with unlimited abundance, where movie stars retreat to nurse their plastic surgeries or bake themselves to death in their obsolescence. It's where artists in the middle of creative pause try to recapture their enthusiasm only to fall in quicksand and boutique managers stand on their heads to cater to the whims of the affluent (this last example is one of my favorites. It reminds me so much of the art galleries and boutiques one block over from Bouron Street in New Orleans-- the kinds that make you wonder how the hell some of these stay in business, conjuring scenarios where a rich patron glides in and takes care of the rent with one purchase).
Though these stories are unrelated, each of the central characters share the same spoiled sense of entitlement. This is a world where no person, and not even the laws of nature, tell these people 'no'. "No-- we can't interrupt our lives to fuel your vanity project" "No--my livelihood is not your pastime" "No-- I am not your dead husband no matter how hard you protest". It is less a concentrated warning of the future than a suggestion of the kinds of pathologies we'll encounter when technology serves as the chariot for infantile whims.
Vermilion Sands sits at the border between Ballard's alien alternative Earths like The Drowned World or The Crystal World and his social commentary like in High Rise. The characters feel more fleshed out than usual even in our brief stints. Though even if the characters are interesting, it's the visual moments like the cloud sculptors that I expect to stick in my mind forever.
I too, would not mind a beach house at Vermilion Sands-- even if for a summer.
In the author introduction, Ballard says that Vermilion Sands is not only his guess as to what the future will actually look like, but it's also a place he would be happy to live. The surrealist landscape pays direct homage to Ballard's appreciation of surrealist art. The singing coral formations, the flying Manta Ray caves, the sentient clothing and breathing houses are all wildly inventive, visually evocative, and are freighted with subconscious observations from the sun bleached celebrity brain.
This is a resort with unlimited abundance, where movie stars retreat to nurse their plastic surgeries or bake themselves to death in their obsolescence. It's where artists in the middle of creative pause try to recapture their enthusiasm only to fall in quicksand and boutique managers stand on their heads to cater to the whims of the affluent (this last example is one of my favorites. It reminds me so much of the art galleries and boutiques one block over from Bouron Street in New Orleans-- the kinds that make you wonder how the hell some of these stay in business, conjuring scenarios where a rich patron glides in and takes care of the rent with one purchase).
Though these stories are unrelated, each of the central characters share the same spoiled sense of entitlement. This is a world where no person, and not even the laws of nature, tell these people 'no'. "No-- we can't interrupt our lives to fuel your vanity project" "No--my livelihood is not your pastime" "No-- I am not your dead husband no matter how hard you protest". It is less a concentrated warning of the future than a suggestion of the kinds of pathologies we'll encounter when technology serves as the chariot for infantile whims.
Vermilion Sands sits at the border between Ballard's alien alternative Earths like The Drowned World or The Crystal World and his social commentary like in High Rise. The characters feel more fleshed out than usual even in our brief stints. Though even if the characters are interesting, it's the visual moments like the cloud sculptors that I expect to stick in my mind forever.
I too, would not mind a beach house at Vermilion Sands-- even if for a summer.
October 12, 2020
Muy distinto del primer libro que leí de Ballard, High-Rise.
En este libro, como en aquel, tenemos un futuro no muy lejano (los relatos son de 1956-1970), bastante reconocible. En este caso, la acción parece situada en la década de los 2000s, o sea el futuro próximo del autor. El escenario es una ciudad vacacional costera, Vermilion Sands, que es un poco Las Vegas (está rodeada de desierto), un poco California y Miami (es el lugar donde vacacionan y tienen sus mansiones los ricos y famosos) y un poco San Junipero, del capítulo homónimo de Black Mirror. Todo el tiempo tenemos esa sensación de que hay cosas que no cuadran en Vermilion Sands, y que no es el paraíso que parece.
Finalmente, vemos que todo lo maravilloso que hay en la ciudad es en realidad, muy tenebroso: las rayas voladoras, las casas sentientes, la ropa inteligente, las estatuas que cantan y hasta las flores. De hecho, el paraíso se parece mucho a una pesadilla.
Me gusta mucho que la historia está formada por relatos independientes, situados en el mismo lugar, y aunque fueron publicados en forma separada y escritos en distintas épocas, el resultado es muy parejo y cohesivo. Pulgar para arriba para Ballard.
En este libro, como en aquel, tenemos un futuro no muy lejano (los relatos son de 1956-1970), bastante reconocible. En este caso, la acción parece situada en la década de los 2000s, o sea el futuro próximo del autor. El escenario es una ciudad vacacional costera, Vermilion Sands, que es un poco Las Vegas (está rodeada de desierto), un poco California y Miami (es el lugar donde vacacionan y tienen sus mansiones los ricos y famosos) y un poco San Junipero, del capítulo homónimo de Black Mirror. Todo el tiempo tenemos esa sensación de que hay cosas que no cuadran en Vermilion Sands, y que no es el paraíso que parece.
Finalmente, vemos que todo lo maravilloso que hay en la ciudad es en realidad, muy tenebroso: las rayas voladoras, las casas sentientes, la ropa inteligente, las estatuas que cantan y hasta las flores. De hecho, el paraíso se parece mucho a una pesadilla.
Me gusta mucho que la historia está formada por relatos independientes, situados en el mismo lugar, y aunque fueron publicados en forma separada y escritos en distintas épocas, el resultado es muy parejo y cohesivo. Pulgar para arriba para Ballard.
May 22, 2022
Like a gallery of Dali paintings. Gorgeous, unforgettable.
Jane Ciracylides, the mutant singer with insects in her eyes. Like, wtf. Best character/name ever.
Jane Ciracylides, the mutant singer with insects in her eyes. Like, wtf. Best character/name ever.
September 3, 2025
Struggled for a little bit but that has much more to do with my July, post vacation, reading slump, and my occasional difficulty in getting into short story collects. Fun, punchy and strange, at times a little too pulpy for my taste, but it’s a blast. Some standouts are stellavista 99, prime belladonna, screen game and Venus smiles
August 17, 2019
This collection of short stories introduces the Ballard Pixie Dream Girl - most stories feature an extremely mysterious and also extremely beautiful woman, who is introduced on the first or second page of each story (with something like "And that was how I first met Fluella Saltwater" or some such curious Ballardian name), she will seemingly have no personality to speak of, just the designated role of Being Attractive And Very Distant. Ballard is of course infamous for poorly written female characterisations, no change here.
That said, Ballard's short fiction revels in a fun kind of weirdness, also no change here!
There are singing flowers. There are singing statues. There are living, instantly responsive garments. Insects wearing tiny jewels.
There's a story (Venus Smiles) about a curious statue (created by yet another Ballard Pixie Dream Girl), that had me laughing out loud. I mean, Ballard's writing always has a dark, dry sense of humour or wit to it, but this is something else.
And there's a story (The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista) about 'psychotropic' houses, the architecture of which reacts to the mood of the inhabitants. The fact that previous owners leave an imprint, makes this the Ballard version of a ghost tale.
What binds these stories (beside all taking place in or around the beach town Vermillion Sands) is that they tend to be notedly airier and less dark or menacing then his other work. They're sort of.. pleasant, with some stories bordering on the dull.
Probably not the best collection to start with if you're new to Ballard's short fiction (you'd be better off with a 'darker' collection), but it shows a different side to his writing for more experienced readers.
That said, Ballard's short fiction revels in a fun kind of weirdness, also no change here!
There are singing flowers. There are singing statues. There are living, instantly responsive garments. Insects wearing tiny jewels.
There's a story (Venus Smiles) about a curious statue (created by yet another Ballard Pixie Dream Girl), that had me laughing out loud. I mean, Ballard's writing always has a dark, dry sense of humour or wit to it, but this is something else.
And there's a story (The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista) about 'psychotropic' houses, the architecture of which reacts to the mood of the inhabitants. The fact that previous owners leave an imprint, makes this the Ballard version of a ghost tale.
What binds these stories (beside all taking place in or around the beach town Vermillion Sands) is that they tend to be notedly airier and less dark or menacing then his other work. They're sort of.. pleasant, with some stories bordering on the dull.
Probably not the best collection to start with if you're new to Ballard's short fiction (you'd be better off with a 'darker' collection), but it shows a different side to his writing for more experienced readers.
August 12, 2019
This is a book of short stories. I didn't realise this. They're all set in the same place though, Vermillion Sands, so my mistake wasn't a totally idiotic one. Think of the Martian Chronicles. Then stop, because apart from the short stories that are all linked by location, and the sci-fi genre, these two books are not alike. Martian Chronicles is good. This is bad. Maybe not one star bad but I couldn't bring myself to finishing it so that's all it's getting. The stories are all about artists and celebrities in this run down futurist Vegas type resort. It's all very sleepy and slow. He's probably trying to "paint a picture of the scene" and all that but I just find it dull. I'm feeling tired and lethargic just thinking back on the book to write this review.
October 20, 2022
This collection of connected stories shows a great deal of surrealist imagination. It didn't always feel as though the strange visions in Ballard's head were clearly recreated on the page, making it harder to become fully immersed in the strange world of Vermilion Sands. The stories and characters also got to feeling a little formulaic - full of unimpressive men and the impossibly mysterious women they somehow manage to find themselves involved with.
Some of the stories did stand out. The most notable for me was the penultimate (and I think longest) story Studio 5, The Stars. This one has the feel of mythological retelling and focuses on the role of human creativity in a world where algorithms can produce perfect art, which seems enduringly relevant for the modern day.
Some of the stories did stand out. The most notable for me was the penultimate (and I think longest) story Studio 5, The Stars. This one has the feel of mythological retelling and focuses on the role of human creativity in a world where algorithms can produce perfect art, which seems enduringly relevant for the modern day.
November 21, 2013
Wow. What an amazing collection of far out stories. So mundane and yet so far out. Sonic Sculptures, Plants that hum and whine Beethoven, Buildings that shift and change according to the moods of it's inhabitants, Wind Sculptures that cut clouds into faces with gliders, pirates that sail the sand seas among sand-rays and crystal groves.
I've never read anything like it.
I've never read anything like it.
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