Bunker Tales
Further to yesterday’s post on Lord Horror, I urge you to follow it up with a reading of this interview with Britton and Butterworth over at Reality Studio. It’s about the Savoy duo’s meeting with...
View ArticleYour mission…
One of the country’s most acclaimed novelists has called for the Bluewater Centre, in Kent, to be obliterated. In London Orbital, a film inspired by Iain Sinclair’s book of the same title to be...
View ArticleBluewater, Round 2
Bluewater: photo by James Boardman. Further to yesterday’s post on Bluewater shopping centre, Michael Collins in the Guardian reports on the construction of Ebbsfleet, “Britain’s first new town of the...
View ArticleEmpire of the Sun: First Draft
We had a discussion here some time ago about Ballard’s preference for the typewriter over the computer. Even more old school, he writes the first draft in longhand. Cop that, cyberpunks! Rick McGrath...
View ArticleGoodbye America?
Over at Barnes & Noble, SF writer Paul Di Filippo makes a valiant attempt to get Americans interested in Ballard, making some pertinent remarks about market forces in the US: One of the most...
View ArticleCrash Cover Conundrum
So, what’s happened with the competition to design the cover of the new, limited edition of Crash? The deadline for submissions was April 30 and the winner was supposed to be announced on May 28. But...
View ArticleContemporary Critical Perspectives: J.G. Ballard
Jeannette Baxter, organiser of last year’s Ballard conference at the University of East Anglia, is the editor of a new critical volume on Ballard. It’s due for release in September 2008, to be...
View ArticleBallard: Big in San Marino!
Leigh P. emailed to tell me of this odd stamp sci-fi set issued in Sam Marino in the late 90s. Among the hard-SF names like Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov are not only Ballard but also Burgess and Orwell...
View ArticleThe Hoodlum Scientist's Fieldbook
“Dr. Robert Vaughan.. Maldoror of the motorways, he has a scarred penis, probably from a motorbike accident…” So, the idea is to use Google Earth to map out the various locations. Below is a...
View Article'Get Lost': Burroughs on Curtis
Every now and then I get sent links to articles about Ian Curtis that mention Ballard. While I find Curtis interesting I try to refrain from posting about him as I don’t really think there’s much to...
View ArticleStrange Fiction
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe. There’s a new interview with JGB in the Guardian, conducted by James Campbell. It’s short, it lazily rehashes the same old stuff about Ballard’s house and (perhaps as a...
View Article'Engineering the moral order': Strange Housing Communities
San-Zhr Pod Village. Photograph: Craig Ferguson. The Tomorrow Museum is a new blog that I have really been enjoying. It’s curated by Joanne McNeil, a freelance writer on science and technology, and...
View ArticleCrash Kama Sutra
ABOVE: Kevin Levell’s entry. We still have no official announcement on the Crash Cover competition, but responding to my enquiry, Kevin Levell wrote to tell me of his own entry. Referring to the...
View Article'His personal horizon': Sinclair and Self on Ballard
When Iain Sinclair and Will Self appeared on stage together earlier this year to talk about psychogeography, chaired by Kevin Jackson, I wondered what mystical forces aligned for this event to come to...
View ArticleSecure the parking lot; charge the mall
We pick up the story as the Metro-Centre shopping mall is overrun and sealed off by a private paramilitary force, forcing a confrontation with police and regular army outside… ‘The Metro-Centre is...
View Article'All about stars and time…'
ABOVE: Jean Seberg as Louise? Ballard archivist David Pringle knows of my obsession with Ballardian film and he has supplied me with a few more crumbs. Searching for Ballardiana on Google Books, David...
View ArticleJean Seberg, part 2
I know we’re supposed to be all blase and post-ironic about the internet these days, but still I retain the capacity to be knocked sideways by the blinding pace and reach of the info dump. What was...
View ArticleSontag on Ballard
Here is Susan Sontag praising the Grove Press edition of Love and Napalm: Export USA (aka The Atrocity Exhibition). This appeared in Evergreen Review no. 96 (Spring 1973), in a publisher’s...
View ArticleFlooded London
ABOVE: Flooded London, by Squint/Opera. You don’t need me to tell you what these images evoke… ‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked after a pause. ‘The name of this city?’ When Kerans shook his head...
View ArticleDrained London
ABOVE: Eltham Lido, by Gigi Cifali. Curiously, the house we moved to had a drained swimming pool in its garden. It must have been the first drained pool I had seen, and it struck me as strangely...
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