pickOver the course of the past year I have been dipping into this volume, mostly while at waiting rooms. I spend a lot of time in waiting rooms as part of my job. Arranged chronologically, one of the pleasures of this book is witnessing Ballard's development as a writer & reading the stories that would later be fleshed out into book-length narratives (ie The Subliminal Man which seems to prefigure Crash). Although Ballard's stories are short on👇
vivastory character development, they are conceptually brilliant & often compensate for his shortcomings. A great example of his genius is the final story in the volume, “Time of Passage.“ Initially it seems to be a reverse narrative, but it soon becomes apparent that this is not strictly true. Rather he somehow manages to fuse a narrative that is both a linear & a reverse narrative. One of the prophets of our social collapse & one of the first to write 2y
vivastory cli-fi, Ballard seemed to have been ahead of his time. As a side note: There really needs to be a better edition of the selected stories available. The currently available one is 300 pages. Both volumes of the complete stories equals over 1500 pages... (edited) 2y
LeahBergen It can be tricky to write about short story anthologies but this is a great review! 2y
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vivastory @LeahBergen Thanks so much! It was fun, & def. a bit tricky to write. 2y
batsy Great review! Sounds fascinating. It seems wrong that I've gone this long without reading Ballard. 2y
vivastory @batsy Thanks! I think that you'd especially like High-Rise & The Drowned World. I read the following many years ago & have been thinking lately of revisiting![[tagged book]](https://image.librarything.com/pics/litsy_webpics/icon_taggedBook@3x.png)
Concrete Island 2y
Concrete Islandbatsy @vivastory The first two are on my TBR for being the most talked about or most influential of his books, but I'm adding Concrete Island to the list! 2y
