The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1
by:
J.G. Ballard (author)
Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780007242290 (0007242298)
Publish date: February 1st 2010
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 784
Edition language: English
I once (somewhere on Goodreads) observed that a lot of what is usually labelled Science Fiction is really Engineering Fiction. There are rare examples of Mathematics Fiction (e.g. Flatland, Abbott or Eon, Greg Bear). There's a lot of Physics Fiction and Biology Fiction. Le Guin wrote Anthropolgy Fic...
Ballard was prolific in the short story form, using it to play out and cultivate his seemingly endless supply of nifty conceptual ideas, arising out of the zeitgeist of cyberpunk and spaghetti sci-fi in the 1960s. Ballard's various visions of a nightmarishly over-populated Earth, possible consequenc...
Some excellent stories in there, and Ballard remains one of my favorite writers... but a lot of the pieces dating from after 1980 seem to be rather less inspired (and, for some reason, not even as well-written!) as his earlier work. Still worth checking out though.
There are some real gems in here (especially the Vermillion Sands stories), and the variety of ideas present in the stories is absolutely amazing - especially if one considers they were published in the time period of only 6-7 years or so! Ballard is one of my favorite writers, and it's an excellent...
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