- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (July 6 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312278446
- ISBN-13: 978-0312278441
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 14.1 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #326,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"A visionary in both style and substance . . .The literary equivalent of Salvador Dali or Max Ernst."—The Washington Post Book World
"A writer of enormous inventive powers. Ballard has, like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty, deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of the imagination."—Malcolm Bradbury, The New York Times Book Review
"Complex, obsessive, frequently poetic, and always disquieting chronicles of nature rebelling against humans, of the survival of barbarism in a world of mechanical efficieny, of entropy, anomie, breakdown, ruin . . . The blasted landscapes that his characters inhabit are both external settings and states of mind."—Luc Sante
"A writer of enormous inventive powers. Ballard has, like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty, deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of the imagination."—Malcolm Bradbury, The New York Times Book Review
"Complex, obsessive, frequently poetic, and always disquieting chronicles of nature rebelling against humans, of the survival of barbarism in a world of mechanical efficieny, of entropy, anomie, breakdown, ruin . . . The blasted landscapes that his characters inhabit are both external settings and states of mind."—Luc Sante
Book Description
First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily prescient and now provide greater perspective on our computer-dominated culture. Ballard's voice and vision have long served as a font of inspiration for today's cyber-punks, the authors and futurist who brought the information age into the mainstream.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
parts of this book are brilliant,
By
This review is from: The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (Paperback)
I would rate a few of the stories contained in this book with five stars, but other stories bring the total rating down to 3 stars. These are the stories which I would rate with 5 stars: "The Concentration City", "Chronopolis", "Thirteen for Centaurus", and "The Sublimiminal Man". "The Concentration City" is set somewhere in the future where somethings taken for granted now have long been forgotten. Hence things have to be reinvented and rediscovered. Because of "development" however, there are almost insurmountable barriers to reinvention. "Chronopolis" is a fascinating story of how using watches and clocks became illegal. "Thirteen for Centaurus" is about a space station supposedly travelling to a distant gallaxy. "The Sublimiminal Man" is aptly named because it is about exactly what the title says. The rest of the stories just didn't hold my interest. Some of them were very complex while others were simple but didn't have a good plot. Indeed, some of the stories had no plot at all. As far as climax is concerned, none of his stories had a climax. Most of his stories should be read mainly for the experience as opposed to a good meat and potatoes story. One thing about J.G. Ballard is that he certainly is very imaginative and creative.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Food for Thought,
By Scott Spires (Prague, Czech Republic) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Best Short Stories Of J. G. Ballard, The (Paperback)
Ballard is one of the great "conceptualizers" of modern literature. The premises of his stories are the most immediately striking thing about them. Sometimes the story doesn't live up to the expectations he creates, but this is probably because he sets the bar so high.In any case, whether a Ballard story is a total or only a partial success, it invariably provides plenty of food for thought. Three of them--"The Overloaded Man", "The Drowned Giant", and "The Garden of Time"--rank among my all-time favorites for their perfect fusion of speculative and mythic qualities. The more technology-based stories ("Concentration City", "The Voices of Time") are more interesting for their ideas than their execution. In the introduction to this volume, Anthony Burgess hits on the central importance of Ballard's work: "Ballard considers that the kind of limitation that most contemporary fiction accepts is immoral... Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination." If you agree, buy this book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some of the best short fiction,
By Sid V "Sid" (Bayside, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Best Short Stories Of J. G. Ballard, The (Paperback)
This is some of the best short fiction ever written. A friend of mine lent me this book. I've read a lot more J.G Ballard because I loved this book so much, but have not enjoyed Ballards other work as much. Most of the stories deal with mans struggle to cope - with technolgy, with fear, with relationships with change etc. There's a few dud stories but most are home runs.
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