Product Description

First volume in a two volume collection of the acclaimed short stories by the author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes -- regarded by many as Britain's No 1 living fiction writer. With sixteen novels over four decades -- from 'The Drowned World' in 1962 to his highly acclaimed 'Super-Cannes' in 2000 -- J.G. Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain's most celebrated and original novelists. For all that time he has also written short stories; in fact, many people consider that he is at his best in the short-story format. These highly influential stories have appeared in magazines such as New Worlds, Amazing Stories and Interzone, and in several separate collections, including 'The Voices of Time', 'The Terminal Beach', 'The Day of Forever', 'The Venus Hunters', 'The Disaster Area', 'Vermilion Sands', 'Low-Flying Aircraft', 'Myths of the Near Future' and 'War Fever'. Set out in the order in which they were originally published, these stories provide an unprecedented opportunity to review the career of one of Britain's greatest writers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6209 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 784 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Complete Short Stories of JG Ballard are required reading for all connoisseurs of Ballard's writing. This compilation brings together 96 short stories drawn from previous collections of Ballard's short stories, including The Voices of Time and War Fever, as well as four previously uncollected stories. The result is an exhilarating overview of Ballard's development as a short-story writer, from the singing orchids of Vermilion Sands in Prima Belladonna, completed in 1956, to the millennial anxieties of Report from an Obscure Planet, written in 1992.

The Complete Short Stories confirm Ballard's stature as a craftsman of the short story, which often suits his surreal brilliance above and beyond later novels such as Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. In his Introduction, Ballard reflects, "the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow for ever in the deep purse of your imagination." Time and again, whether exploring the furthest reaches of science fiction, or the banal surrealism of English suburban life, Ballard's perverse insight lodges itself in your imagination, as he explores and often punctures what he refers to as "that over-worked hologram called reality". This collection will delight devotees, but it will also allow readers new to Ballard to experience a short-story writer of the stature of Borges, Bradbury or Edgar Allan Poe. --Jerry Brotton

Review
'[Ballard has] one of the most haunting, cogent and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.' William Boyd, Mail on Sunday 'A feast, and not only for those who think -- as I do -- that Ballard has long been Britain's most original and inventive writer. For anyone bored with the stale conventions of mainstream fiction, his 90-odd stories of stilled time, desolate beauty and personal fulfilment in extreme situations will be sheer delight.' John Gray, New Statesman 'This marvellous, inexhaustible book is a monument at the end of fertile lands! Ballard is a superb writer; few could publish a book of this size which is never boring, where the invention never flags. Unfailingly ingenious and perverse.' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph 'Thank God for J.G. Ballard and his short stories in which wonder and awe never fade. It is no exaggeration to say that Ballard's stories are beyond compare. This is a collection of tales and fables to be savoured by admirers and newcomers alike.' Robert Edric, Spectator 'Reading this book of collected stories is a peculiarly enriching experience.' Jason Cowley, Observer

About the Author
J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His controversial novel Crash was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg.

Customer Reviews

Breathtaking
Nobody could write a book of this size without repeating themselves at least a few times - Ballard, over the forty year period this book covers, actually repeats himself a great deal, but one gets the impression this is no accident. Ballard's recurring themes develop like a plot does in a good novel, his ideas gradually overlapping and coalescing to create a unique vision of the world that is at once bleak and optimistic.

Ballard is fantastic at placing characters into particular spaces and watching them interact and develop within these strict geographical parameters. Space stations, abandoned hotels, beach resorts for the apathetic rich - one gets the feeling that these are all illustrations, surreal microcosms, of our own everyday existence.

By the way, to place these stories in context, read Ballard's Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women - one can really see the significance of aircraft wrecks that litter his stories or the manipulative sirens that inhabit Vermilion Sands.

Plese read this book, and gaze through the weird and wonderful fiction to a clutch of simple truths.

Enthralling
I'll keep this brief; this collection of short stories is enthralling. Ballard writes with such skill that he's able to tell a big story and paint a colourful picture in sometimes just a few pages. And his ideas are often from a different planet.

I'm not a great, or quick, reader, and have found this 1000 page collection to keep me happy for almost 12 months! I tend to read one story every other night, and each one is completely different to the last. They're often thought-provoking, often amusing, often surreal, and always entertaining.

When he's good he's very, very good. But...
OK, this must be the definitive collection of JG Ballards work, spanning his writings for the best part of half a century. Therefore, if you like his stuff, this is a good buy. However, for those with an interest in him as a literary eccentric (a kind of shrewd William Burroughs)this a bit hit and miss. There are some stories which are excellent, some so good and written in such an innovative style that it almost makes the purchase worthwhile. But these are from his post-Atrocity Exhibition era and some of the earlier stuff is just generic sci-fi that has been emulated so much over the intervening years that it has lost its freshness. Apart from that, this is a good buy for sci-fi fans, readers of esoterica and those who fancy a change from the usual brain-drain of modern fiction.