In October 2008, before his death,Ballard's literary agent Margaret Hanburybrought an outline for a book by Ballardwith the working title Conversations withMy Physician: The Meaning, if Any, of Life to the Frankfurt Book Fair.The physician in question is oncologist Professor Jonathan Waxman of Imperial College, London, who was treating Ballardfor prostate cancer.While it was to be in part a book aboutcancer, and Ballard's struggle with it, itreportedly was to move on to broader themes.In April 2009 The Guardian reported that HarperCollins announced that Ballard's Conversations with My Physiciancould notbe finished and plans to publish it wereabandoned. In 2013, a 17-page untitled typescriptlisted as "Vermilion Sands short story indraft" in the British Library catalogue andedited into an 8,000-word text by BernardSigaud appeared in a short-lived Frenchreissue of the collection under the title"Le labyrinthe Hardoon" as the first storyof the cycle, tentatively dated "late 1955/early 1956" by Sigaud and others.ArchiveIn June 2010 the British Library acquiredBallard's personal archives under the Britishgovernment's acceptance in lieuscheme for death duties.The archive contains eighteen holograph manuscripts for Ballard's novels, includingthe 840-page manuscript for Empire of theSun, plus correspondence, notebooks, andphotographs from throughout his life.In addition, two typewritten manuscripts for The Unlimited Dream Company are held atthe Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at AustinDystopian fictionWith the exception of his autobiographicalnovels, Ballard most commonly wrote in thepost-apocalyptic dystopia genre.His most celebrated novel in this regard is Crash, in which cars symbolise the mechanisationof the world and man's capacity to destroyhimself with the technology he creates.The characters (the protagonist, called Ballard,included) become increasingly obsessedwith the violent psychosexuality of carcrashes in general, and celebrity car crashesin particular.Ballard's disturbing novel was turned intoa controversial-and likewise disturbing-cerebral film by David Cronenberg.Particularly revered among Ballard's admirersis his short story collection Vermilion Sands (1971), set in an eponymous desert resorttown inhabited by forgotten starlets, insaneheirs, very eccentric artists, and the merchantsand bizarre servants who provide for them.Each story features peculiarly exotic technologysuch as cloud-carving sculptors performing fora party of eccentric onlookers, poetry-composing computers, orchids with operaticvoices and egos to match, phototropicself-painting canvases, etc. In keeping with Ballard'scentral themes, most notably technologically-mediated masochism, these tawdry and weirdtechnologies service the dark and hiddendesires and schemes of the human castawayswho occupy Vermilion Sands, typically withpsychologically grotesque and physically fatalresults.In his introduction to Vermilion Sands, Ballardcites this as his favourite collection.In a similar vein, his collection Memories of the Space Age explores many varieties of individualand collective psychological fallout from-andinitial deep archetypal motivations for-theAmerican space exploration boom of the 1960sand 1970s.Commentators such as Will Self have describedmuch of his fiction as being concerned with'idealised gated communities; the affluent, andthe ennui of affluence [where] the virtualisedworld is concretised in the shape of these gateddevelopments.'He added in these fictional settings 'there is noreal pleasure to be gained; sex is commodifiedand devoid of feeling and there is no relationshipwith the natural world.These communities then implode into some formof violence.Budrys, however, mocked his fiction as "call[ing]for people who don't think ... to be the protagonistof a J. G. Ballard novel, or anything more than avery minor character therein, you must havecut yourself off from the entire body of scientificeducation".[In addition to his novels, Ballard made extensiveuse of the short story form.Many of his earliest published works in the 1950sand 1960s were short stories, including influentialworks like Chronopolis.In an essay on Ballard, Will Wiles notes how hisshort stories 'have a lingering fascination withthe domestic interior, with furnishing andappliances,' adding, 'it's a landscape that hedistorts until it shrieks with anxiety'.He concludes that 'what Ballard saw, and whathe expressed in his novels, was nothing lessthan the effect that the technological world,including our built environment, was havingupon our minds and bodies.'TelevisionOn 13 December 1965, BBC Two screened anadaptation of the short story "Thirteen toCentaurus" directed by Peter Potter.The one-hour drama formed part of the firstseason of Out of the Unknown and starred Donald Houston as Dr. Francis and JamesHunter as Abel Granger. In 2003, Ballard'sshort story "The Enormous Space" (firstpublished in the science fiction magazine Interzone in 1989, subsequently printed inthe collection of Ballard's short stories War Fever) was adapted into an hour-longtelevision film for the BBC entitled Home by Richard Curson Smith, who also directed it.The plot follows a middle class man whochooses to abandon the outside world andrestrict himself to his house, becoming a hermit.InfluenceBallard is cited as an important forebear ofthe cyberpunk movement by Bruce Sterling in his introduction to the seminalMirrorshades anthology.Ballard's parody of American politics, thepamphlet "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan",which was subsequently included as a chapterin his experimental novel The Atrocity Exhibition,was photocopied and distributed by prankstersat the 1980 Republican National Convention.In the early 1970s, Bill Butler, a bookseller in Brighton, was prosecuted under UK obscenity laws for selling the pamphlet.In his 2002 book Straw Dogs, the philosopher John Gray acknowledges Ballard as a majorinfluence on his ideas. Ballard described thebook as a "clear-eyed assessment of humannature and our almost unlimited gift for self-delusion."According to literary theorist Brian McHale, The Atrocity Exhibition is a "postmodernist text based on science fictiontopoi.Lee Killough directly cites Ballard's seminal Vermilion Sands short stories as the inspirationfor her collection Aventine, also a backwaterresort for celebrities and eccentrics wherebizarre or frivolous novelty technology facilitatesthe expression of dark intents and drives. Terry Dowling's milieu of Twilight Beach is alsoinfluenced by the stories of Vermilion Sands and other Ballard works.In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard hailed Crash as the "first great novel of theuniverse of simulation."Ballard also had an interest in the relationshipbetween various media. In the early 1970s,he was one of the trustees of theInstitute for Research in Art and Technology.In popular musicBallard has had a notable influence on popularmusic, where his work has been used as a basisfor lyrical imagery, particularly amongst British post-punk and industrial groups.Examples include albums such as Metamatic by John Foxx, various songs by Joy Division (mostfamously "Atrocity Exhibition" from Closer),"High Rise" by Hawkwind "Miss the Girl" by The Creatures (based on Crash), "Down in the Park" by Gary Numan, "Chrome Injury"by The Church, "Drowned World" by Madonna "Warm Leatherette" by The Normal and Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown. SongwritersTrevor Horn and Bruce Woolley credit Ballard's story "The Sound-Sweep"with inspiring The Buggles' hit "Video Killed the Radio Star",and the Buggles' second album included a song entitled "Vermillion Sands." The 1978 post-punk bandComsat Angels took their name from one of Ballard's shortstories.An early instrumental track by British electronic musicgroup The Human League "4JG" bearsBallard's initials as a homage to the author(intended as a response to "2HB" byRoxy Music).The Manic Street Preachers include a samplefrom an interview with Ballard in their song"Mausoleum".Klaxons named their debut album Myths of the Near Future after one of Ballard'sshort story collections. The Sound of Animals Fighting took the nameof the song "The Heraldic Beak of the Manufacturer's Medallion" from Crash. The song "Terminal Beach"by the American band Yacht is a tribute to hisshort story collection that goes by the samename.
Biografia e opere di Ballard, parte seconda.
In October 2008, before his death,Ballard's literary agent Margaret Hanburybrought an outline for a book by Ballardwith the working title Conversations withMy Physician: The Meaning, if Any, of Life to the Frankfurt Book Fair.The physician in question is oncologist Professor Jonathan Waxman of Imperial College, London, who was treating Ballardfor prostate cancer.While it was to be in part a book aboutcancer, and Ballard's struggle with it, itreportedly was to move on to broader themes.In April 2009 The Guardian reported that HarperCollins announced that Ballard's Conversations with My Physiciancould notbe finished and plans to publish it wereabandoned. In 2013, a 17-page untitled typescriptlisted as "Vermilion Sands short story indraft" in the British Library catalogue andedited into an 8,000-word text by BernardSigaud appeared in a short-lived Frenchreissue of the collection under the title"Le labyrinthe Hardoon" as the first storyof the cycle, tentatively dated "late 1955/early 1956" by Sigaud and others.ArchiveIn June 2010 the British Library acquiredBallard's personal archives under the Britishgovernment's acceptance in lieuscheme for death duties.The archive contains eighteen holograph manuscripts for Ballard's novels, includingthe 840-page manuscript for Empire of theSun, plus correspondence, notebooks, andphotographs from throughout his life.In addition, two typewritten manuscripts for The Unlimited Dream Company are held atthe Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at AustinDystopian fictionWith the exception of his autobiographicalnovels, Ballard most commonly wrote in thepost-apocalyptic dystopia genre.His most celebrated novel in this regard is Crash, in which cars symbolise the mechanisationof the world and man's capacity to destroyhimself with the technology he creates.The characters (the protagonist, called Ballard,included) become increasingly obsessedwith the violent psychosexuality of carcrashes in general, and celebrity car crashesin particular.Ballard's disturbing novel was turned intoa controversial-and likewise disturbing-cerebral film by David Cronenberg.Particularly revered among Ballard's admirersis his short story collection Vermilion Sands (1971), set in an eponymous desert resorttown inhabited by forgotten starlets, insaneheirs, very eccentric artists, and the merchantsand bizarre servants who provide for them.Each story features peculiarly exotic technologysuch as cloud-carving sculptors performing fora party of eccentric onlookers, poetry-composing computers, orchids with operaticvoices and egos to match, phototropicself-painting canvases, etc. In keeping with Ballard'scentral themes, most notably technologically-mediated masochism, these tawdry and weirdtechnologies service the dark and hiddendesires and schemes of the human castawayswho occupy Vermilion Sands, typically withpsychologically grotesque and physically fatalresults.In his introduction to Vermilion Sands, Ballardcites this as his favourite collection.In a similar vein, his collection Memories of the Space Age explores many varieties of individualand collective psychological fallout from-andinitial deep archetypal motivations for-theAmerican space exploration boom of the 1960sand 1970s.Commentators such as Will Self have describedmuch of his fiction as being concerned with'idealised gated communities; the affluent, andthe ennui of affluence [where] the virtualisedworld is concretised in the shape of these gateddevelopments.'He added in these fictional settings 'there is noreal pleasure to be gained; sex is commodifiedand devoid of feeling and there is no relationshipwith the natural world.These communities then implode into some formof violence.Budrys, however, mocked his fiction as "call[ing]for people who don't think ... to be the protagonistof a J. G. Ballard novel, or anything more than avery minor character therein, you must havecut yourself off from the entire body of scientificeducation".[In addition to his novels, Ballard made extensiveuse of the short story form.Many of his earliest published works in the 1950sand 1960s were short stories, including influentialworks like Chronopolis.In an essay on Ballard, Will Wiles notes how hisshort stories 'have a lingering fascination withthe domestic interior, with furnishing andappliances,' adding, 'it's a landscape that hedistorts until it shrieks with anxiety'.He concludes that 'what Ballard saw, and whathe expressed in his novels, was nothing lessthan the effect that the technological world,including our built environment, was havingupon our minds and bodies.'TelevisionOn 13 December 1965, BBC Two screened anadaptation of the short story "Thirteen toCentaurus" directed by Peter Potter.The one-hour drama formed part of the firstseason of Out of the Unknown and starred Donald Houston as Dr. Francis and JamesHunter as Abel Granger. In 2003, Ballard'sshort story "The Enormous Space" (firstpublished in the science fiction magazine Interzone in 1989, subsequently printed inthe collection of Ballard's short stories War Fever) was adapted into an hour-longtelevision film for the BBC entitled Home by Richard Curson Smith, who also directed it.The plot follows a middle class man whochooses to abandon the outside world andrestrict himself to his house, becoming a hermit.InfluenceBallard is cited as an important forebear ofthe cyberpunk movement by Bruce Sterling in his introduction to the seminalMirrorshades anthology.Ballard's parody of American politics, thepamphlet "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan",which was subsequently included as a chapterin his experimental novel The Atrocity Exhibition,was photocopied and distributed by prankstersat the 1980 Republican National Convention.In the early 1970s, Bill Butler, a bookseller in Brighton, was prosecuted under UK obscenity laws for selling the pamphlet.In his 2002 book Straw Dogs, the philosopher John Gray acknowledges Ballard as a majorinfluence on his ideas. Ballard described thebook as a "clear-eyed assessment of humannature and our almost unlimited gift for self-delusion."According to literary theorist Brian McHale, The Atrocity Exhibition is a "postmodernist text based on science fictiontopoi.Lee Killough directly cites Ballard's seminal Vermilion Sands short stories as the inspirationfor her collection Aventine, also a backwaterresort for celebrities and eccentrics wherebizarre or frivolous novelty technology facilitatesthe expression of dark intents and drives. Terry Dowling's milieu of Twilight Beach is alsoinfluenced by the stories of Vermilion Sands and other Ballard works.In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard hailed Crash as the "first great novel of theuniverse of simulation."Ballard also had an interest in the relationshipbetween various media. In the early 1970s,he was one of the trustees of theInstitute for Research in Art and Technology.In popular musicBallard has had a notable influence on popularmusic, where his work has been used as a basisfor lyrical imagery, particularly amongst British post-punk and industrial groups.Examples include albums such as Metamatic by John Foxx, various songs by Joy Division (mostfamously "Atrocity Exhibition" from Closer),"High Rise" by Hawkwind "Miss the Girl" by The Creatures (based on Crash), "Down in the Park" by Gary Numan, "Chrome Injury"by The Church, "Drowned World" by Madonna "Warm Leatherette" by The Normal and Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown. SongwritersTrevor Horn and Bruce Woolley credit Ballard's story "The Sound-Sweep"with inspiring The Buggles' hit "Video Killed the Radio Star",and the Buggles' second album included a song entitled "Vermillion Sands." The 1978 post-punk bandComsat Angels took their name from one of Ballard's shortstories.An early instrumental track by British electronic musicgroup The Human League "4JG" bearsBallard's initials as a homage to the author(intended as a response to "2HB" byRoxy Music).The Manic Street Preachers include a samplefrom an interview with Ballard in their song"Mausoleum".Klaxons named their debut album Myths of the Near Future after one of Ballard'sshort story collections. The Sound of Animals Fighting took the nameof the song "The Heraldic Beak of the Manufacturer's Medallion" from Crash. The song "Terminal Beach"by the American band Yacht is a tribute to hisshort story collection that goes by the samename.