Recommend me some J.G. Ballard - S/D, I guess.

The only one I found iffy was 'Kindness of Women'. Hilarious to think it was marketed as the sequel to 'Empire of the Sun'.

Skip the two Ballard film adaptions, though he's the one author who'll have the honor of having both Spielberg and Cronenberg direct film versions of his books. Cronenberg's 'Shivers / aka They Came From Within' is basically his version of 'High Rise'.

Not like I have an explicit problem with that, I just expected more from Cronenberg, for me the film didn't come close to capturing the experience of the book. I admit though, it's still a very good film.

A lot fo his collections of short stories are excellent.

i second this.
does he have a book of "black box recordings", possibly w/footnotes. i know this is vague, maybe i imagined it.

I thought his last novel "Super-Cannes" was great. It isn't as over the top than his earlier novels like "Crash", "Concrete Island" or "High-Rise", but how he characterizes the corporate world in "Super-Cannes" is both very funny and frightening at the same time.

The only two novels of his that I have read that I wouldn't say are a good place to start are "Cocaine Nights" and "The Drowned World", mostly that they are a step down from some the others, but they are both worth reading.

I haven't read "The Kindness of Women". I've got copies of "Day of Creation" and "The Crystal World", but haven't yet gotten around to reading them.

"High-Rise" was a bit of a challenge to find a copy, as it hasn't been in print in the US in a while. Funny enough, the copy I found used came out of the US Naval Libary at the base in Chicago.

there's actually a film of the atrocity exhibition! i don't know anyone who's seen it, though.

high rise" has one of the all time great opening lines in all of literature.

____

what IS the opening line?

I still haven't read any, and I can't even remember watching a documentary on him.

what IS the opening line?

"As he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."

died aged 78 according to the BBC

Goodness. We were watching Empire of the Sun last night.

Damn. He had cancer for what seems to have been a really long time so this is not much of a surprise I guess, but damn nevertheless. RIP.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8007331.stm

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Author-JG-Ballard-Has-Died-Aged-78-After-A-Long-Battle-Against-Illness-His-Agent-Has-Revealed/Article/200904315264815?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15264815_Author_JG_Ballard_Has_Died_Aged_78_After_A_Long_Battle_Against_Illness%2C_His_Agent_Has_Revealed_

RIP :(

Feels somewhat appropriate to be seeing Throbbing Gristle tonight.

just been reading the complete short stories book & absolutely loving it
RIP

RIP you sick, sick man

Deserves his own RIP thread...

what did people think of High Rise, if they saw it? I read the book so incredibly long ago that I can't really compare it, but I rather enjoyed the film.

Oh my god, Louisiana. pic.twitter.com/d6eUQYt6p9

— Earthling (@ziyatong) February 19, 2021

"The Garden of Time" is such a good short story. Kind of hard not to read it now and not see it as an allegory for the fall of civilization.

I consider myself on the side of civilization, but there's a snobbery about this story too - the single aristocrat watching the barbarians approach.

I guess Peter Thiel can find out when the screaming masses overrun his Palantir compound.

I bought a collection of all his Cape Canaveral stories (1962-1985) called Memories of the Space Age (Arkham House) that I can heartily recommend.. might be a good intro for newbies. Lots of obsession over aging aircraft as well as our consensual perception of time, mostly taking place in abandoned Florida motels.

Always mighty to encounter in anthologies, though the only JGB book I've got is the collection Chronopolis, incl. several fave stories mentioned upthread: always rewards and in several cases demands re-reads, rassling rematches (not a complaint; my mind needs the exercise).
And I still come back to this 1978 conversation: checking in, getting further into what he's talking about, timeswise:

JG Ballard

It’s easy to point yourself in the direction of Shepperton. You follow the line of the incoming jets from Central London. Out on the new M3 -- reservoirs, the motion sculpture of the motorway and its slip roads, modern light industrial buildings -- a landscape at first non-descript, later compelling. Heathrow Airport isn’t far away: its influence is subtle but all-pervasive: the feeling of transience, man-made landscape, isolation in limbo from a strict sense of time...

Naturally, I got trapped on the motorway and am shot 15 miles beyond where I wish to go. Unable to turn off, cross and claustrophobic in a sudden heat wave, I find the cool sweep of the motorway insolent and malevolent. Once off, it takes me another 20 minutes to travel in effect a mile -- the road system has abandoned any logic to the needs of the motorway. Ballard lives in a semi-detached -- 30's at a guess -- quite close to the centre of Shepperton: the street is quiet and residential. He is ebullient, intense, a rapid talker (with an inflection reminiscent of George Sanders at times)...

Interview by Jon Savage....

this era needs its own “why I want to fuck Ronald Reagan”