Page Updated: 13/05/01
J.G. Ballard
thevoicesoftime.jpg
The Voices of TimeThe Voices of Time Newpbk 31 Mar 01
The Terminal BeachThe Terminal Beach Newpbk 31 Mar 01
The Drowned WorldThe Drowned World
Buy at Amazon.co.ukBooks By J.G. Ballard
About the Author
Bibliography


New Paperback - Phoenix (2001)
Buy at Amazon.co.uk The Voices of Time
The strange coming and going among the watch-towers portends who knows what event to come; the ghost of past applause that keeps a forgotten diva just this side of sanity; a husband’s interminable wait while his wife fusses in the kitchen before leaving for work; the last beautiful blooms plucked as life fades with the light in an evening garden . . .
Time appears in many guises, speaks in many voices in these stories, Einsteinian meditations on one of world literature’s oldest themes. Arrestingly original yet supremely understated, tautly plotted and yet hauntingly human, these tales are as startling as they are infallibly compelling.
The critics on J.G. Ballard:
'One of the few world-class British writers alive today' Literary Review
`The first thing to say about J. G. Ballard is not that he is among our finest writers of science fiction, but that he is among our finest writers of fiction tout court period’ Anthony Burgess
‘Ballard’s ferocious intelligence, his wit, his cantankerousness, and in particular his extraordinary rendering of the perverse pleasures of today’s paranoia, make him one of the grand magicians of modern fiction’ Brian Aldiss
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New Paperback - Phoenix (2001)
Buy at Amazon.co.uk The Terminal Beach
The Terminal Beach is one of the most brilliant collections of short stories by the author of Crash and Empire of the Sun. It ranges from the title story’s disturbing picture of an abandoned atomic testing island in the Pacific to the shocking Oedipal fantasy `The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon’. At the heart of the stories lies the bitter paradox that the extraordinary creative power of man’s imagination is matched only by his reckless instinct for destruction.
The critics on J.G. Ballard:
‘A grand magician of modern fiction’ Brian Aldiss
`It is utterly appropriate to number Ballard among the true contemporary radicals of the imagination, to mention him in the same breath as Burroughs or Genet or Carroll or Rimbaud. His best work is simply a new way of looking at the world’ New Musical Express
`Perhaps Ballard’s strongest single collection of stories’ David Pringle
`One of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination - and a national treasure’ Guardian
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Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (1999)
The Drowned World
In the 2lst century, fluctuations in solar radiation have caused the ice-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilization has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition travels to record the flora and fauna of this new Triassic Age.
'There are those (I am among them) who would back Ballard as Britain's number one living novelist' John Sutherland, Sunday Times
'This novel, with its brilliant descriptions of an inundated London and an ecology reverting to the Triassic, gained Ballard acceptance as a major author'
'Ballard is one of the brightest stars in post-war fiction. This tale of strange and terrible adventure in a world of steaming jungles has an oppressive power reminiscent of Conrad' Kingsley Amis
'Powerful and beautiful and clear... Ballard's potent symbols of beauty and dismay inundate the reader's mind. It's most haunting' Brian Aldiss
'The originality and appropriateness of his vision continue to ensure his standing as one of the most important writers ever to have emerged from SF' The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction
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About The Author
J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China where his father was a businessman. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. It was here that Ballard became interested in SF. He started writing short stories in the late 1950s, while working on a scientific journal. The Drowned World (1962) was his first major novel. Ballard continued to write SF throughout the 1960s and 1970s, publishing perhaps his most controversial work, Crash, in 1973. In 1984, he wrote Empire of the Sun, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

  • The Voices of Time ( 1974) revised edition 1st published 1974 New Phoenix Pbk Mar 01
  • The Terminal Beach Short Stories (Gollancz, 1964) New Phoenix Pbk Mar 01
  • The Drowned World ( 1962) Gollancz Millenium Pbk Sep 99
  • Running Wild (Flamingo)
  • Cocaine Nights

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