The Drowned World
In Ballard’s first full novel, inspired in part by his memories of Shanghai, London is a city inundated by a primeval swamp.
The Drought
Water. Man’s most precious commodity is a luxury of the past in this compelling early novel from Ballard. Radioactive waste from years of industrial dumping has caused the sea to form a protective skin strong enough to devastate the earth it once sustained. And while the remorseless sun beats down on Dr Charles Ransom and the remaining inhabitants of Mount Royal, civilization begins to crack…
Collected Short Stories
Ballard’s very first stories, ‘Prima Belladonna’ and ‘Escapement’, were published in Science Fantasy and New Worlds back in 1956. This volume offers an unparalleled chance to explore his complete shorter oeuvre and marvel at both his development as a writer and his mastery of the form.
Crash
Ballard’s controversial cult novel, subsequently made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg, was originally published in 1973 but it has lost none of its potency. Vaughan, a TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the highways, craves the ultimate erotic atrocity: a union of blood, semen and engine fluid in a head-on smash with Elizabeth Taylor.
High Rise
Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on ‘enemy’ floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for mayhem. In Ballard’s visionary novel, human society slips into violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
Millennium People
While searching for the truth behind the Heathrow bomb that killed his ex-wife, psychologist David Markham infiltrates a shadowy protest group based in the comfortable enclave of Chelsea Marina. He finds that these middle-class revolutionaries are intent on destroying everything they’ve worked so hard for: blowing up the National Film Theatre, no less, burning their books, defaulting on their maintenance charges and staging a great Bonfire of the Volvos. Part cultural analysis and part surreal social prediction, this gripping late novel finds Ballard still at the height of his creative powers.
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Heaven’s Edge
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Lord of the Flies
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WATCH
Empire of the Sun
With a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, and starring a young Christian Bale as Jim, Steven Spielberg’s 1987 adaptation has the grace and grandeur of a David Lean epic and, perhaps more importantly, the author’s wholehearted seal of approval.
The Sun
Described by Ballard himself as resembling ‘a dream-like newsreel filmed by a secret camera deep in the emperor’s bunker’ and as a film that ‘brilliantly sums up all the dilemmas that surround war and peace’ Alexander Sokurov’s film offers a remarkable portrait of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito and compellingly details the closing events of the war in Asia.
SURF
www.jgballard.com
About the Author
J.G. BALLARD was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China, where his father was a businessman. Following 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. He started writing short stories in the late 1950s, while working on a scientific journal. His first major novel, The Drowned World, was published in 1962. His acclaimed novels include The Crystal World, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash (filmed by David Cronenberg), High-Rise, The Unlimited Dream Company, The Kindness of Women (the sequel to Empire of the Sun), Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and, most recently, Millennium People.
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By the same author
The Drowned World
The Voices of Time
The Terminal Beach
The Drought
The Crystal World
The Day of Forever
The Venus Hunters
The Atrocity Exhibition
Vermilion Sands
Crash
Concrete Island
High-Rise
Low-Flying Aircraft
The Unlimited Dream Company
Hello America
Myths of the Near Future
Empire of the Sun
The Day of Creation
Running Wild
War Fever
The Kindness of Women
Rushing to Paradise
A User’s Guide to the Millennium (non-fiction)
Cocaine Nights
Super-Cannes
The Complete Short Stories
Millennium People
Copyright
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith
London W6 8JB
www.harperperennial.co.uk
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006
EIGHTH EDITION
Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1994
First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1984
Copyright © J.G. Ballard 1984
PS Section copyright © Travis Elborough 2006, except
‘The End of My War’ by J.G. Ballard © J.G. Ballard 1995
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
J.G. Ballard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-28313-2
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Epigraph
Part I
1 The Eve of Pearl Harbor
2 Beggars and Acrobats
3 The Abandoned Aerodrome
4 The Attack on the Petrel
5 Escape from the Hospital
6 The Youth with the Knife
7 The Drained Swimming-Pool
8 Picnic Time
9 An End to Kindness
10 The Stranded Freighter
11 Frank and Basie
12 Dance Music
13 The Open-Air Cinema
14 American Aircraft
15 On their Way to the Camps
16 The Water Ration
17 A Landscape of Airfields
18 Vagrants
19 The Runway
Part II
20 Lunghua Camp
21 The Cubicle
22 The University of Life
23 The Air Raid
24 The Hospital
25 The Cemetery Garden
26 The Lunghua Sophomores
27 The Execution
28 An Escape
29 The March to Nantao
30 The Olympic Stadium
31 The Empire of the Sun
Part III
32 The Eurasian
33 The Kamikaze Pilot
34 The Refrigerator in the Sky
35 Lieutenant Price
36 The Flies
37 A Reserved Room
38 The Road to Shanghai
39 The Bandits
40 The Fallen Airmen
41 Rescue Mission
Part IV
42 The Terrible City
P.S.
About the author
An Investigative Spirit
LIFE at a Glance
A Writing Life
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