Author: Samuel Francis
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472513037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
J. G. Ballard self-professedly 'devoured' the work of Freud as a teenager, and entertained early thoughts of becoming a psychiatrist; he opened his novel-writing career with a manifesto declaring his wish to write a science fiction exploring not outer but 'inner space', and declaring the need for contemporary fiction to be viewed 'as a branch of neurology'. He also apparently welcomed a reader's report on Crash (1973) condemning him as 'beyond psychiatric help' as confirming his achievement of 'total artistic success'. Samuel Francis investigates Ballard's engagement with psychology and the psychological in his fiction, tracing the influence of key figures including Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung and R.D. Laing and placing his work in the context of the wider fields of psychology and psychiatry. While the psychological preoccupations of his writing are very clear - including his use of concepts such as the unconscious, psychopathology, 'deviance', obsession, abnormal psychology and schizophrenia - this is the first book to offer a detailed analysis of this key conceptual and historical context for his fiction.
The Psychological Fictions of J.G. Ballard
Author: Samuel Francis
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472513037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
J. G. Ballard self-professedly 'devoured' the work of Freud as a teenager, and entertained early thoughts of becoming a psychiatrist; he opened his novel-writing career with a manifesto declaring his wish to write a science fiction exploring not outer but 'inner space', and declaring the need for contemporary fiction to be viewed 'as a branch of neurology'. He also apparently welcomed a reader's report on Crash (1973) condemning him as 'beyond psychiatric help' as confirming his achievement of 'total artistic success'. Samuel Francis investigates Ballard's engagement with psychology and the psychological in his fiction, tracing the influence of key figures including Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung and R.D. Laing and placing his work in the context of the wider fields of psychology and psychiatry. While the psychological preoccupations of his writing are very clear - including his use of concepts such as the unconscious, psychopathology, 'deviance', obsession, abnormal psychology and schizophrenia - this is the first book to offer a detailed analysis of this key conceptual and historical context for his fiction.
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472513037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
J. G. Ballard self-professedly 'devoured' the work of Freud as a teenager, and entertained early thoughts of becoming a psychiatrist; he opened his novel-writing career with a manifesto declaring his wish to write a science fiction exploring not outer but 'inner space', and declaring the need for contemporary fiction to be viewed 'as a branch of neurology'. He also apparently welcomed a reader's report on Crash (1973) condemning him as 'beyond psychiatric help' as confirming his achievement of 'total artistic success'. Samuel Francis investigates Ballard's engagement with psychology and the psychological in his fiction, tracing the influence of key figures including Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung and R.D. Laing and placing his work in the context of the wider fields of psychology and psychiatry. While the psychological preoccupations of his writing are very clear - including his use of concepts such as the unconscious, psychopathology, 'deviance', obsession, abnormal psychology and schizophrenia - this is the first book to offer a detailed analysis of this key conceptual and historical context for his fiction.
High-Rise: A Novel
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404737
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
"Harsh and ingenious! High Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind." —Martin Amis, New Statesman When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404737
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
"Harsh and ingenious! High Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind." —Martin Amis, New Statesman When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
Kingdom Come: A Novel
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404745
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Fiction) “J.G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis.... A brilliant novel.” —Literary Review A violent novel filled with insidious twists, Kingdom Come follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richard’s suspicions are aroused. Investigating the mystery, Richard uncovers at the Metro-Centre mall a neo-fascist world whose charismatic spokesperson is whipping up the masses into a state of unsustainable frenzy. Riots frequently terrorize the complex, immigrant communities are attacked by hooligans, and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to suburban mind rot, revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404745
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Fiction) “J.G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis.... A brilliant novel.” —Literary Review A violent novel filled with insidious twists, Kingdom Come follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richard’s suspicions are aroused. Investigating the mystery, Richard uncovers at the Metro-Centre mall a neo-fascist world whose charismatic spokesperson is whipping up the masses into a state of unsustainable frenzy. Riots frequently terrorize the complex, immigrant communities are attacked by hooligans, and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to suburban mind rot, revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.
The Drowned World: A Novel (50th Anniversary Edition)
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404060
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
From one of the most powerful and original talents in science fiction comes the story of a new world--a strange world where solar radiation fluctuations have melted the polar ice caps, flooding the land and raising the temperature of the atmosphere.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404060
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
From one of the most powerful and original talents in science fiction comes the story of a new world--a strange world where solar radiation fluctuations have melted the polar ice caps, flooding the land and raising the temperature of the atmosphere.
War Fever
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466856645
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 187
Book Description
A war-ravaged Beirut is the setting for the title story of this visionary collection by J. G. Ballard, a tale in which a young street fighter inadvertently discovers how to bring an end to the bloodshed only to find that his solution is all too effective as far as some supposedly neutral observers are concerned. Other stories in War Fever 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.
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466856645
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 187
Book Description
A war-ravaged Beirut is the setting for the title story of this visionary collection by J. G. Ballard, a tale in which a young street fighter inadvertently discovers how to bring an end to the bloodshed only to find that his solution is all too effective as far as some supposedly neutral observers are concerned. Other stories in War Fever 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.
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871403420
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
A final statement from the greatest clairvoyant of twentieth-century literature. Never before published in America, this revelatory autobiography—hailed as “fascinating [and] amazingly lucid” (Guardian)—charts the remarkable story of James Graham Ballard, a man described by Martin Amis as “the most original English writer of the last century.” Beginning with his Shanghai childhood, Miracles of Life guides us from the deprivations of Lunghua Camp during World War II, which provide the back story for his best-selling Empire of the Sun, to his arrival in war-torn England and his emergence as “the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity” (Observer). With prose of characteristic precision, Ballard movingly recalls his first attempts at science fiction, the 1970 American pulping of The Atrocity Exhibition—which sprang from his fascination with JFK conspiracy theories—and his life as a single father after the premature death of his wife. “This book should make yet more converts to a cause that Ballard’s devotees have been pleading for years” (Independent).
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871403420
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
A final statement from the greatest clairvoyant of twentieth-century literature. Never before published in America, this revelatory autobiography—hailed as “fascinating [and] amazingly lucid” (Guardian)—charts the remarkable story of James Graham Ballard, a man described by Martin Amis as “the most original English writer of the last century.” Beginning with his Shanghai childhood, Miracles of Life guides us from the deprivations of Lunghua Camp during World War II, which provide the back story for his best-selling Empire of the Sun, to his arrival in war-torn England and his emergence as “the ideal chronicler of our disturbed modernity” (Observer). With prose of characteristic precision, Ballard movingly recalls his first attempts at science fiction, the 1970 American pulping of The Atrocity Exhibition—which sprang from his fascination with JFK conspiracy theories—and his life as a single father after the premature death of his wife. “This book should make yet more converts to a cause that Ballard’s devotees have been pleading for years” (Independent).
The Crystal World
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007374895
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
From J. G. Ballard, author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes his extraordinary vision of an African forest that turns all in its path to crystal.
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007374895
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
From J. G. Ballard, author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Cocaine Nights’ comes his extraordinary vision of an African forest that turns all in its path to crystal.
J. G. Ballard
Author: D. Harlan Wilson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252050037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Prophetic short stories and apocalyptic novels like The Crystal World made J. G. Ballard a foundational figure in the British New Wave. Rejecting the science fiction of rockets and aliens, he explored an inner space of humanity informed by psychiatry and biology and shaped by surrealism. Later in his career, Ballard's combustible plots and violent imagery spurred controversy--even legal action--while his autobiographical 1984 war novel Empire of the Sun brought him fame. D. Harlan Wilson offers the first career-spanning analysis of an author who helped steer SF in new, if startling, directions. Here was a writer committed to moral ambiguity, one who drowned the world and erected a London high-rise doomed to descend into savagery--and coolly picked apart the characters trapped within each story. Wilson also examines Ballard's methods, his influence on cyberpunk, and the ways his fiction operates within the sphere of our larger culture and within SF itself.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252050037
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Prophetic short stories and apocalyptic novels like The Crystal World made J. G. Ballard a foundational figure in the British New Wave. Rejecting the science fiction of rockets and aliens, he explored an inner space of humanity informed by psychiatry and biology and shaped by surrealism. Later in his career, Ballard's combustible plots and violent imagery spurred controversy--even legal action--while his autobiographical 1984 war novel Empire of the Sun brought him fame. D. Harlan Wilson offers the first career-spanning analysis of an author who helped steer SF in new, if startling, directions. Here was a writer committed to moral ambiguity, one who drowned the world and erected a London high-rise doomed to descend into savagery--and coolly picked apart the characters trapped within each story. Wilson also examines Ballard's methods, his influence on cyberpunk, and the ways his fiction operates within the sphere of our larger culture and within SF itself.
The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 146685667X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of J. G. Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. This collection includes “The Garden of Time,” the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala–fashion’s biggest night. 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 futurists who brought the information age into the mainstream.
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 146685667X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of J. G. Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. This collection includes “The Garden of Time,” the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala–fashion’s biggest night. 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 futurists who brought the information age into the mainstream.
Super-Cannes
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429970537
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
In this acclaimed speculative novel, the author of Crash imagines an exclusive business park that hides a ghastly mystery: “One of his finest” (San Francisco Chronicle). For forty years, J.G. Ballard has shared his unnervingly prescient vision of where civilization was headed. He kept his unflinching eye on the point where technological progress has worn away our humanity. And Super-Cannes is Ballard at his best: “Rarely has his vision been so total, his creation so complete” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park. Isolated and secure, overlooking the French Riviera, it is a virtual city-state offering the latest in services and facilities for the most elite high-tech industries. Yet one day Dr. Greenwood from Eden-Olympia’s clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and she and her husband, Paul, are given Dr. Greenwood’s house as a residence. Convalescing after an accident, Paul becomes fascinated with Dr. Greenwood and his shocking crimes. Clues in the house lead him to question Eden-Olympia’s official account. While Jane is lured deeper into Eden-Olympia’s inner workings, Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain its smoothly running surface. Soon he finds himself in race against crushing forces that may be beyond anyone’s control.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429970537
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
In this acclaimed speculative novel, the author of Crash imagines an exclusive business park that hides a ghastly mystery: “One of his finest” (San Francisco Chronicle). For forty years, J.G. Ballard has shared his unnervingly prescient vision of where civilization was headed. He kept his unflinching eye on the point where technological progress has worn away our humanity. And Super-Cannes is Ballard at his best: “Rarely has his vision been so total, his creation so complete” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park. Isolated and secure, overlooking the French Riviera, it is a virtual city-state offering the latest in services and facilities for the most elite high-tech industries. Yet one day Dr. Greenwood from Eden-Olympia’s clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and she and her husband, Paul, are given Dr. Greenwood’s house as a residence. Convalescing after an accident, Paul becomes fascinated with Dr. Greenwood and his shocking crimes. Clues in the house lead him to question Eden-Olympia’s official account. While Jane is lured deeper into Eden-Olympia’s inner workings, Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain its smoothly running surface. Soon he finds himself in race against crushing forces that may be beyond anyone’s control.