War Fever

by J.G. Ballard

A war-ravaged Beirut is the setting for the title story of this visionary collection, a tale in which a young street fighter inadvertently discovers how to bring an to the bloodshed only to find that his solution is all too effective as far as some supposedly neutral observers are concerned. Other stories feature an assassination plot against an American astronaut, the leader of an authoritarian religious movement; a man who is destroyed by a car crash and resolves never to leave his apartment again; and the survivor of a toxic-waste ship wrecked on a deserted Caribbean island.

Includes:
"War Fever" (1989)
"The Secret History of World War 3" (1988)
"Dream Cargoes" (1990)
"The Object of the Attack" (1984)
"Love in a Colder Climate" (1989)
"The Largest Theme Park in the World" (1989)
"Answers to a Questionnaire" (1985)
"The Air Disaster" (1975)
"Report on an Unidentified Space Station" (1982)
"The Man Who Walked on the Moon" (1985)
"The Enormous Space" (1989)
"Memories of the Space Age" (1982)
"Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown" (1976)
"The Index" (1977)

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Collections, Literature, 20th Century, British Literature

175 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1990

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

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I have this book anymore, but I seem to remember that one of the stories is about the entire population of the country obsessing day and night over the president's blood pressure. Might be apropos for the next two weeks or so.

[David Peak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very, very good collection of Ballard's short stories (blurbed by David Foster Wallace!), mainly speculative and sci-fi, and, for the most part, published in the 70s and 80s. All of his trademark obsessions appear here in full: messianic complexes, astronauts, Ronald Reagan, flight, wild distortions of time and space. There really isn't a bad story to be found. And a few, such as "The Enormous Space," "The Object of the Attack," and "Memories of the Space Age" are as good as Ballard gets. Highly recommended.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection that shows of many of Ballard’s strengths and very little of his faults (only one empty swimming pool to be found). These frequently experimental narratives find Ballard in the mode of the Atrocity Exhibition and Crash, offering a surreal and haunting vision of the tomb humanity is digging for itself with its own technology and obsessions. These texts present themselves so seriously I find them quite funny in an odd way. The Swiftian savagery of the title story is satire so true it’s barely satire. The ending of “Report on an Unidentified Space Station” felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, turned the page and it was over, the air sucked out of me. Haven’t been hit over the head by story in that way in awhile. It was great. The tour de force “Memories of the Space Age” is the backbone of this collection, and to distill the flavor of this collection check out this list of the last processions of one of the demented characters, “the tape machine on which he recorded his steady decline; an album of nude Polaroid poses of a woman doctor he had known in Vancouver; his gray’s Anatomy from his student days, a unique work of fiction, pages still stained with formalin from the dissecting-room cadavers; a paperback selection of Muybridge’s stop-frame photography; and a psychoanalytic study of Simon Magus.”(pg134) Read on if that appeals or intrigues, or disturbs in a way you can’t put a finger on.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

14 stories making up a very mixed bag here, including a couple of stories that are among his best, and a couple that I found to be quite uninspiring. Flawed genius is always what you get with Ballard. When you come across a good Ballard story, finishing the story is often just the beginning of the experience. Not really the best collection of his work.

[Yngvild · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no consistent theme running through the fourteen short pieces from the early 1980’s in J G Ballard’s War Fever. There are the familiar Ballard themes of time standing still, an abandoned Cape Canaveral with its empty motels, man-powered light aircraft and effulgent jungle flora and fauna, but there are fourteen distinct mind-expanding ideas behind the fourteen works. The tendency over previous Ballard short story collections, such as it is, is towards whimsicality and good humour. Only one story, The Enormous Space, uses the black comedy of Crash.

J G Ballard acquired a reputation for being prescient. It was probably unjustified; throw enough futuristic ideas up in the air and some are bound to coincide with actual events. The pity with playing the Ballard–as–Nostradamus game is that it ignores Ballard’s genuinely interesting observations. The point of The Secret History of World War 3 is that the public (and not just the American public) have become so absorbed with the personality cult of politics that the media obsession with the president’s lovely family or intestinal polyp allows countries to wage war on places their populations cannot find on the map.

The two most unusual items in this collection are not short stories at all. Answers to a Questionnaire is a series of answers to an undisclosed interrogation. The challenge to the reader is to imagine who the respondent was and what the questions were.

68) The Second Coming.
69) He expressed strong disappointment at the negative attitude of the Third World.
70) The Kremlin.
71) He wanted me to become the warhead of a cruise missile.

The other very odd (even for Ballard) piece is The Index. This is supposed to be the index of a fictional autobiography of some major world figure, identified as HRH.

S
Schweitzer, Albert, receives HRH, 199; performs organ solo for HRH, 201; discusses quest for the historical Jesus with HRH, 203-11; HRH compared to by Leonard Bernstein, 245, expels HRH, 246
Sex-change, rumoured operation on HRH, 655
Stanwyk, Barbara 248
Stork Club, 231

I read no more than a couple of these pieces a day. If I read any more, I had the queasy feeling of losing touch with reality.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, vividly written, though uneven collection of fourteen dystopian and science fiction short stories. I particularly liked ‘The Secret History of World War 3’, ‘Dream Cargoes’, ‘The Man who walked on the Moon’, ‘Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown,’ and ‘Report of an unidentified Space Station’.

Third term President Reagan’s health is reported on minute by minute, yet the occurrence of WW3 goes unnoticed! Pollution on a coral island causes the flora and fauna to grow rapidly. A homeless man believes he is an astronaut and he is treated by tourists as if he is. A man’s wife divorces him and he breaks down in an unusual way. An emergency landing on an unidentified space station provides for an unexpected discovery.

Ballard fans should find this book a satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 1990. The stories were written during the period 1975 to 1989.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not all of the stories here are great, but there are a few pieces, mostly near the end of the collection (The Man Who Walked on the Moon, The Enormous Space, Memories of the Space Age, etc.), that are prime Ballard and do well to elevate the whole.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, J. G. Ballard, the sci fi writer who inspired so many of my favorite bands--Joy Division, The Normal, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, only to name a few. This collection includes, I surmise, the texts that inspired the Mekons' "Ghosts of American Astronauts." If not, it should be, if only to sooth my paranoid sensibilities. Sensibilities, I might add, which these stories both soothe and prod, like a tongue on a sorely loose tooth, provoking fantasy, pleasure, and a little--perhaps welcome?--pain. (If you've not heard the Mekons' song: https://youtu.be/1DMlxrGIi8U )

Let me say outright that Ballard's writing, although pretty unique to him and immediately recognizable, is also somehow terribly hackneyed, way too overwrought to be taken very seriously. And yet his ideas, obsessions actually, are so alluring I find the uneasy pleasure described above in his best works--Crash, Atrocity Exhibition and even, to a certain extent, here in War Fever. So I loved it--but it's really only a three star book by my high literary standards. So, by giving it 4 stars I'm splitting the difference between what my aesthetic judgement and my desire for unknown dream landscapes in which to frolic tell me.

Beyond the weird, melancholy, and effecting obsessions to which I allude--the corroding tail-end of the space age, marital infidelity, messianic religion, the completely sane interior logic of madness, flight, technology, nature as a living, biological monster of sorts--there's also a restless desire displayed in three tales here to stretch the boundaries of textual form. (The desire is also present in such works as Dracula and other meta-textually-constructed novels, to re-frame fictional works beyond the usual narrative format.) "Answers to a Questionnaire," "Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown," and the particularly ingenious "The Index" are all wonderful experiments in form worthy of OuLiPo members Queneau, Matthews, Calvino, or Perec--or even Lydia Davis's more recent restless exploration of ways to tell a story without the narrative format of story-telling. Brilliant that, I found it quite inspiring.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite collection of Ballard's work, though I'd skip the first one (the title piece is the weakest of the bunch, unfortunately).

"Dream Cargoes" and "The Air Disaster" are two of the most haunting (and unsettling) short stories I've ever read, and "The Largest Theme Park in the World" is the only story told in omniscient third person plural that has ever really worked for me (I mean, there aren't many, but still).

I don't like everything that Ballard writes, but this is good, solid stuff. In college, these stories made me want to write dangerously, and when I read them now, they still do.

(And this is out of print???)

[Dana Jerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think one of my favorite stories of all time is in this collection. A group of space explorers lands on an abandoned station. They take a survey of it, only to discover that the more they explore, the bigger it gets until they are completely lost and totally consumed. RIP J.G.

[Keith Kenniff · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite book of short stories. I read this all practically in one sitting, totally enthralled by each surreal world that Ballard transports you to.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ballard is one of my favourite writers, so I was surprised and delighted to come across this collection I'd never seen before.

Some of the stories are very much of their late-80s time, making them less appealing. 'Dream Cargoes' and 'Memories of the Space Age' are more in the classic fever-dream style we know and love, and I remembered 'The Enormous Space' from a chilling TV adaptation a decade ago.

The winners for me, though, are the last and last-but-one in the collection, 'Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown' and 'The Index', each of which uses a unique literary device so smart I was green with envy over it.

[Daniel Gualtieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really top-notch collection of stories; Ballard has a very unique voice, dark and subversive but also visionary and forward-looking. While many of his themes in this book involve visions of futures gone awry, he maintains an often-tragic beauty in his style. Amazing writing, with some really interesting metafictional structures (most notably in The Index, one of the best stories in the book). My favorite story overall was probably Notes Toward a Mental Breakdown, an incredible exercise in unreliability, but I loved every single one of the stories. I look forward to revisiting this book in the very near future, as well as diving into Ballard's other work.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the last Ballard I read a bit uneven, so this was a pleasant return to form. Most of the stories here are excellent, even the most experimental. One story consists of answers to a questionnaire not provided; one is a series of footnotes to an 18-word sentence that summarizes a book that does not exist; another is the index to another book that does not exist. Stories such as this push the limits of fiction and in these specific instances foreground the extent to which what we do not know is crucial. They're also dandy reads--even the index. While you might think reading an index for a book without reading the book is weird, part of the fun is teasing out possible elements of the book, and part of the fun is just how deadpan funny it can be. Indeed, deadpan and black humour are Ballardian trademarks fully on display here. My favourite is "The Secret History of World War Three," about a world in which an ancient Ronald Reagan is still President, and the public is so obsessed with his daily health reports that WWIII happens and people don't even notice. (Admittedly, it's a short war.) Ballard's preoccupations--the soullessness of our concrete and technological world; inner space; obsessional mindsets, especially revolving around tech (space exploration is the subject of more than one story here and almost always as a negative thing); existential threats, especially from pseudo-messianic figures, etc. All the stories have aged remarkably well, and many, especially those dealing with media, are probably more relevant today than when they were first published. 4.5 stars.

[Claudio D'Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seemed to offer a good introduction to the work of J.G. Ballard.
His writing is measured with some lines popping out beautifully. To wit: "The palms rose like flagpoles into the vivid Caribbean air, pennants painted with a fresh green sap," from "Dream Cargoes."
A couple of stories had an impact. "The Enormous Space," a tale of a man marooned like a "reductive Crusoe," is one. Its plot is unnerving.
"Love in a Colder Climate" offers a sinister ending.
I'm not sure if, thematically, the stories work as a linked narrative about war. But I chose to read this book before plunging into his classic novel The Drowned World.

[Paul Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Collins] (1990). HB/DJ. 1/1. 176 Pages. Signed/Inscribed. Purchased from Cold Tonnage Books.

14 short stories from J. G. Ballard (1930-2009). 13 reprints (1976-1989), plus “Dream Cargoes”.

Surreal. Prescient. Experimental. Colourful. Absurd. Grim. Comical. Innovative.

“War Fever"
"The Secret History of World War 3"
"Dream Cargoes"
"The Object of the Attack"
"Love in a Colder Climate"
"The Largest Theme Park in the World"
"Answers to a Questionnaire"
"The Air Disaster"
"Report on an Unidentified Space Station"
"The Man Who Walked on the Moon"
"The Enormous Space"
"Memories of the Space Age"
"Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown"
"The Index"

[Jason Bergman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of stories. I particularly enjoyed, "Report on an Unidentified Space Station," as well as the formal cleverness of two others: "Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown" (an 18 word story with 18 footnotes), and "The Index" (a "story" told as the found index of a fictional autobiography).

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly lesser short story collection from Ballard, consisting of a mixture of stories written after he'd largely lost interest in the format and tales which hadn't made the cut for previous Ballard anthologies. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Garrett Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s some really good short stories here. Some of my personal favorites were An Enormous Space, The Air Disaster, and Report on an Unidentified Space Station. I could’ve read full books on these short stories. Lot of fun and creepy at times. I’m excited to read some of the other novels I have of Ballards.

[Mathias Kruse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this a lot, The Object of the Attack was my favorite. Also the index isn’t actually an index, it’s a short story in the form of an index and the index is actually supposed to be from an unpublished autobiography of an unknown person. In the table of contents it just looks like an index but make sure you read it as well.

[Alan Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spotted this in the window of the secondhand charity bookshop so even with my 3 stars it was well worth £2.49! Some of the stories are well thought out such as the book title story ‘War Fever’ whilst others are more an outline of an idea.

[Alejandro Torresano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Algunos cuentos son extraordinarios, otros normales, pero ninguno malo. Recomendable si os gusta el género de cuentos o narraciones breves.

[Michael Martin]

A mixed bag.but all thought provoking. Like his novels, Crash is astonishing while Drowned World feels very dated.

[Pedro Pascoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I amassed a sizeable Ballard collection back in the day, and read most of them. More recently, I revisited 'The Unlimited Dream Company' (which wasn't as good as I'd remembered), and 'Vermilion Sands' (which was better than I'd remembered).

War Fever had been sitting in the Ballard pile for a long time, and I'd been recently reading some critical essays on Ballard, which lead to me picking up one of his books that I hadn't read.

War Fever is a collection of short stories, and most of Ballard's staples make an appearance here. Airplanes and flight, abandoned buildings, the middle class being driven insane, or unsane, transformation of the environment, nerveless resignation to, or embracing of change, obsessions as revelations of the unconscious, all brought to the fore by Ballard's crisp style. Some of his most experimental short stories appear here, particularly 'Answers to a Questionnaire', 'Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown' and 'The Index'.

Having been a long time since I'd read any new (for me) Ballard fiction, the first story that had me nodding in fond reminiscence was 'Dream Cargo', which echoed 'Concrete Island' and his disaster novels. The longest story, 'Memories of the Space Age' was for me the least satisfying, but, as with most Ballard stories, there is always something worth reading and noting in his stories. The obsession of Mallory with the notion of the tiger as having a pelt of fire is a vivid image, and the central idea of unassisted, virtually suicidal 'flight' as an escape from time is a compelling notion and utterly Ballardian.

'War Fever' was a delightful dip, in bite-size chunks, back into the writings of one of my most trusted guides to the psycho-scape of the late 20th century.

[solo · Rating 4 out of 5]

a collection of mostly '80s vintage shorts. "War Fever" (1989) is actually a pretty good - if cruel - novelette and "The Secret History of World War 3" (1988) is brilliant and even more relevant nowadays than it was 30 years ago.

of the brazen stylistic experiments, "The Index" (1977) and "Answers to a Questionnaire" (1985) were too grating for me, and only "Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown" (1976) almost worked*.

"Memories of the Space Age" (1982) and "The Man Who Walked on the Moon" (1985) were carried over from the 1988 "...Space Age" collection, and deservedly so - both are nice.

the rest are oscillating around so-so, so the rating reflects the better stories.
         
*) sort of...

[Sean Meriwether · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ballard has been one of my favorite modern authors who takes unusually directions, especially as he reflects society back on itself with all its strange flaws. He can go where few authors dare to tread. This most likely is due to his childhood experience in a Japanese camp during WWII, which was fictionalized in the artfully executed Empire of the Sun. Like many collections of shorter work, the quality of the stories is uneven and they are hit or miss. For this reader they were mainly a miss.... If you have never read Ballard before, try Crash or Running Wild. If you enjoy his dark take on humanity, you won't regret it. This collection should be reserved for Ballard fans.

[Abby]

This is your quality Ballard--strange, stark scenery, satisfying sentences, shrewish wives and beautiful, catatonic babes, rends and mends in the time-space continuum, attractive loneliness. I'm mystified as usual by this strange hatred of women, and of society in general, really. Bad dialogue. But I'm also drawn along by the series of compelling premises, the acrobatics of Ballard's mind. I read the following story and the one after that because I want to know what this guy is going to do next.

[Emilio · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my money, J G Ballard was always a much better short story writer than novelist, and this is one of his better collections, containing a fine selection of some mid-period experimental works (e.g., "Answers to a Questionnaire"), as well as his trademark portraits of minds descending to very suburban forms of madness ("The Enormous Space") or nostalgic takes on present technology ("Memories of the Space Age"). The original hardcover of this book is one of my prized possessions.

[S.]

He always has a cold brilliance.

"It was curious that images of heaven or paradise always presented a static world, not the kinetic eternity one would expect, the roller-coaster of a hyperactive funfair, the screaming Luna Parks of LSD and psilocybin. It was a strange paradox that given eternity, an infinity of time, they chose to eliminate the very element offered in such abundance."

[Fantasymundo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impecablemente editada por Berenice, los relatos van firmados por la fecha en que fueron escritos, detalle muy de agradecer para el Habitante Incierto. Lectura imprescindible para quien quiera enfrentarse continuar leyendo