The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
by J. G. Ballard
List Price:
Our Price: $21.99
You Save: $13.01 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $11.00 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: J. G. BallardIntroduction: Martin Amis
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-09-21
ISBN: 0393072622
Number of pages: 1216
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Summary of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
?More than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting, cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.??William Boyd
The American publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a landmark event. Increasingly recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic novelists, J. G. Ballard was a ?writer of enormous inventive powers,? who, in the words of Malcolm Bradbury, possessed, ?like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of imagination.?Best known for his novels, such as Empire of the Sun and Crash, Ballard rose to fame as the ?ideal chronicler of disturbed modernity? (The Observer). Perhaps less known, though equally brilliant, were his devastatingly original short stories, which span nearly fifty years and reveal an unparalleled prescience so unique that a new word?Ballardian?had to be invented. Ballard, who wrote that ?short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available,? regretted the fact that the public had increasingly lost its ability to appreciate them.
With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard?s inimitable style was already present in his early stories, most of them published in science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses, time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks. Over the next fifty years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics, including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation, and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as ?being enervated and corrupted by the modern world? (New York Times), Ballard began to examine themes like overpopulation, as in ?Billenium,? a claustrophobic imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter rooms, or the false realities of modern media, as in the classic ?Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,? a faux-psychological study of the sexual and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan?s face on television, in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Given Ballard?s heightened powers of perception, it is astonishing that the dehumanized world that he apprehended so acutely neither diminished his own febrile imagination nor his engagement with mankind, evident in every story, including two new ones for this American edition.
So eerily prophetic is his vision, so commanding are his literary gifts, the import and insight of J. G. Ballard?s deeply humanistic and transcendent works can only grow in years to come.
Short Stories Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Short Stories Books
The Roald Dahl Treasuryby Roald Dahl
Jonathan Cape; Published: 1997; Hardcover; Book
The Red Pony (Twentieth-Century Classics)by John Steinbeck
Penguin Classics; Published: 1994-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.28
Price in other shops:
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountainby Robert Olen Butler
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1993-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.15
Price in other shops:
Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyonby Damon Runyon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1992-11-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $42.35
How We Are Hungryby Dave Eggers
PENGUIN; Published: 2006-02-23; Paperback; Book
Dressing Up for the Carnivalby Carol Shields
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.79
Price in other shops:
East, Westby Salman Rushdie
Vintage Books; Published: 2006-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.91
Price in other shops:
Local Girlsby Alice Hoffman
Vintage/Ebury (a Division of Random; Published: 2000-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.25
Price in other shops:
Someone to Watch Over Me: Storiesby Richard Bausch
Harper Perennial; Published: 2000-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.60
Price in other shops:
Faithless: Tales of Transgressionby Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco; Published: 2001-03-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.04
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Super-Cannes: A Novelby J. G. Ballard
Picador; Published: 2002-10-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.95
Price in other shops:
Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of The 1960s / The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik (Library of America No. 173)by Philip K. Dick
Library of America; Published: 2007-05-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.66
Price in other shops:
High Rise (Flamingo Modern Classic)by J G Ballard
Firebird Distributing; Published: 1977-05-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.95
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dickby Philip K. Dick
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2011-11-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $25.74
Price in other shops:
J.G. Ballard Conversationsby J.G. Ballard
Re/Search Publications; Published: 2005-08-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.99
The Philip K. Dick Collectionby Philip K. Dick
Library of America; Published: 2009-10-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $67.17
Price in other shops:
Concrete Island: A Novelby J. G. Ballard
Picador; Published: 2001-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.55
Price in other shops:
Empire of the Sunby J. G. Ballard
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2005-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.37
Price in other shops:
Atrocity Exhibition (Flamingo Modern Classics)by J G Ballard
Flamingo; Published: 2001-05-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.97
Crash: A Novelby J. G. Ballard
Picador; Published: 2001-10-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.44
Price in other shops: