The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

by J. G. Ballard, Martin Amis (Introduction)

Overview

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle

A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard.

With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius. Whether writing about musical orchids, human cannibalism, or the secret history of World War III, Ballard's Complete Stories evokes the hallucinations of Kafka and Borges in its ability to render modern paranoia and fantastical creations on the page.

Includes the story "The Garden of Time," the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala Dress code.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393076875
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1216
Sales rank:	288,410
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai in 1930 and lived in England from 1946 until his death in London in 2009. He is the author of nineteen novels, including Empire of the Sun, The Drought, and Crash, with many of them made into major films.
Martin Amis is one of Britain's most prolific post-war writers and a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. His stories and essays explore the absurdity of the postmodern condition.

Editorial Reviews

Ballard believes strongly in plot, and, with a few exceptions, his stories are intensely gripping without ever being upbeat or reassuring. In style, his work combines an almost medical precision with an astonishing power for evocative description by the simplest means…Ballard's most influential stories were written mainly in the early 1960s…But this hefty volume permits a reappraisal of his excellent, if somewhat neglected, short fiction of the 1970s and '80s…In The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard devastated worlds are matched with even more devastated psyches. But these aren't simply "myths of the near future," they are probes sent down into the desolate heart of the here and now. As Ballard knew, reality has become just a subgenre of science fiction.
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

The author of well-regarded novels like Crash and Empire of the Sun, which were made into films, British author Ballard was (he died earlier this year) a master of dystopian sf. The 1,216 pages in this collection are an astonishing record of a vibrant and vital mind at work. This volume includes 92 stories, most of which are set in some kind of nightmarish future world or alternate "visionary present," to use Ballard's phrase from his introduction to the book. The variety of stories here is impressive, even dizzying: "Manhole 69," for example, is about a scientific experiment to free human beings from sleep. "Prima Belladonna" is a disturbing story about a relationship between a singing orchid (with a 24-four octave range) and a beautiful, mysterious mutant woman. "Zodiac 2000" updates the Zodiac signs to include "The Sign of the Clones" and "The Sign of the Cruise Missile." Ballard is every bit the equal of Vonnegut, Orwell, and Huxley. VERDICT A revelation; essential reading. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/09.]—Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Library Journal

"A revelation; essential reading."

Literary Journal

"Eerie and melancholy, they unsettle like a Dali painting or a Helmut Newton photograph."

Washington Post

"At 1,200 pages, it may seem like a daunting book for the non-enthusiast, but it provides the best angle for approaching Ballard for the first time—and displays his development into Britain's most original postwar writer...The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard demonstrates the range and evolution of that work, and suggests that we might come up with many more uses of 'Ballardian' than we have so far."

The National - Fatema Ahmed

"As exotic as anyone in the aviary was Ballard, the elegant, evolving stylist, and the one with the finest ideas almost always finely executed. The full showcase of his short-form career is assembled at last in The Collected Stories, with a brilliant introduction by Martin Amis."

Bookslut - Richard Wirick

"Although Ballard, who died in April, was probably more influential than he was popular, during his lifetime he received the ultimate literary honorific: the use of his name in adjectival form. Perhaps best known for his books that became movies...he was a prolific and provocative short-story writer, too....An essential work from an essential writer."

Booklist - Keir Graff

"Ballard is probably the most original English writer of the last century…the book is indispensable."

The Nation - China Mieville

"The marvel of most of these tales is how instantly comprehensible their alternate realities are when so little is explained—and how believable they are, too, thanks to Ballard's unflappable narrative voice. With unerring instinct, he finds the ordinariness in the most preposterous scenarios, thus connecting them in detail and tone to our own reality....There are still two Ballard novels and a memoir awaiting U.S. publication. Let's hope the overdue appearance of this volume means the rest are on their way."

Seattle Times - Michael Upchurch

"A master story writer—the maker of unforgettable artifacts in words, each as absolute and perplexing as sculptures unviewable from a single perspective."

The New York Times Book Review - Jonathan Lethem

"[A] staggeringly great and varied volume.... The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard offers weeks of surprise and pleasure."

Los Angeles Times - Ed Park