Thoughts at the halfway point of Rushing to Paradise

There is a pace about Ballard that grabs you by the eyeballs and leads you into places that you fear to look at. You know that the relationship between the passionate but unhinged Dr Barbara and the young lonely animal rights campaigner Neil is going to go to dark places.

She is determined to save the albatross nesting on an island being used by the French for nuclear experiments but he is following his primeval dreams of visiting and witnessing the nuclear destruction that destroyed his father who was exposed to tests.

The two set sail for the island and face the French, bullets and madness resulting in Neil being shot and becoming some sort of pin-up hero for the cause which rapidly starts snowballing into much more of a determined effort to return to the island and stay fighting off the French permanently to create some sort of paradise.

But with the knowledge of Dr Barbara's murderous past as a doctor happy to kill her elderly patients off and as a witness to her obsessive madness the question mark hovers over just exactly how far Neil is prepared to go with the Dr.

A review will be posted soon...

book review - The Crystal World - JG Ballard

Science is not one of my strong points so I'm not going to pretend by using long words that the causes of the crystallisation that sweeps the African jungle and Florida swamps is terribly clear to me.

However, the lack of complete understanding didn't detract from the enjoyment of the book because this is tapping into the usual Ballardian themes of society breaking down and the reaction of intelligent people to that collapse in social order.

As the jungle crystallises a former leper colony doctor heads back into the jungle not just to see the crystallisation process first-hand but also to reconnect with an old flame. On the boat up the river, a very Conradeque moment, the main character Dr Sanders notices another passenger, Ventress, who it becomes clear later on is on a similar mission to fight with a mine-owner for possession of his dying ex-wife.

The army is holding the line against expanding shimmering jewelled jungle but the main focus to start with is not to enter the jewelled zone but to work out just how the people on the edges of it can be liberated.

In a classic Ballardian way the choice then moves into a more crucial stage which is for the individuals to decide how they want to react to the prospect of life or death. A primeval urge seems to be driving some characters into the jungle into a world where death comes as the skin turns to crystals shimmering and glittering as the very breath it shut up inside the victim.

In a very graphical moment Sanders tries to save the life of an army officer who is crystallising by clearing his mouth by pulling off the crystals. Later on the edge of the affected zone he realises with horror his handiwork has maimed the officer ripping off his skin.

The choice for Sanders is to run, follow the example of his leprosy suffering former girlfriend and embrace the change or crystallisation. The army pulls out and the spread of the crystals continues to gather pace covering the trees and grasses in a shimmering blanket of sparkling frost.

For Sanders the pull back to the crystals and that sense of deciding to embrace the crystals is something that takes time. As a reader you are left sharing that indecision until the very end.

As you come to expect from Ballard the writing is tight, the cast selective and the attention to detail, making the whole thing plausible, is there in abundance. Personally I would run. But facing the pull of the strange lights and the impact on the mind who knows?

Just as with the Drowned World the actions of the main character cannot be logically explained. In a world that has been turned upside down perhaps the primeval instinct is over powering? Brilliantly described and Ballardian with a capital B this along with High Rise and Drowned World has to be one the books by him that is highly recommendable.

book review - The Drought - JG Ballard

“…he now felt that the white deck of the river was carrying them all in the opposite direction, forward into zones of time future where the unresolved residues of the past would appear smoothed and rounded, muffled by the detritus of time, like images in a clouded mirror. Perhaps these residues were the sole elements contained in the future, and would have the bizarre and fragmented quality of the debris through which he was now walking. None the less they would all be merged and resolved in the soft dust of the drained bed.”

There is something very clever about describing a world without location and time because your imagination fills in the blanks. This could be America and it could be in ten years time. What really matters is that underneath the apocalyptic drought there is the ability to chart how human beings in a great position of stress react to the calamity.

Some seem to go into denial, the majority scramble to the coast and to the sea in search of water and others take an observational position, like the main character Dr Charles Ransom, waiting to see how things develop and waiting to see how they will react personally to those changes.

The breakdown of society is one of Ballard’s big themes but cast that on top of a world in acute stress caused by a lack of water and it brings out the extremes in people.

The basic premise is that industrial waste has been pumped into the oceans and turned into some sort of plastic film that prevents evaporation and the usual formation of rain clouds.

Ransom is living aptly in a house boat beached on the banks of an ever dwindling lake with the cars going across the highway heading towards the coast and the fisherman and pleasure boats slowly grinding to a halt. His ex-wife works in the town for the police and it is a journey to his former marital home that spreads out the canvas and introduces some more characters including the strange but rich character who lives in a hou8se with constant beaming lights at the top of the hill.

Just like the architect figure Royal in High Rise the rich maverick refuses to leave the town and sits in his white house making plans and hoarding the water in his swimming pool. Assisted by his unhinged sister and the village idiot he remains even as the fishermen start to hunt down people and the religious leader gives up and heads to the coast.

Ransom is finally driven out himself and travelling with an odd collection of characters that represent some of the varying degrees of possible reactions to the drought he heads for the coast. Once there a sort of hell with barbed wire, guns and the army between the masses and the sea awaits. Tensions rise and finally the tide of human anger and desperation washes away the barriers.

Skip forward and Ransom has been reunited with his wide and is living a hand to mouth existence in a world dominated by religious groups that have settled on the salt covered shoreline.

Going back to the town of the past Ransom faces up to a world where madness reigns. The lack of authority has provided the owner of the white house with a chance to rule in a town where the main enemies are the roaming fishermen. Ransom seems to have given up and becomes part of the court of the water king until it falls apart.

The reader is challenged to think about how they would react in a similar situation. Do you run for the coast, do you stay? And regardless of what you do how long could you keep sane in a world where all the perspectives are changing.

The Crystal World - post II

Not only does Ballard manage to describe so effectively a change in the landscape that is gently apocalyptic but takes his lead character into a position of deciding how to react.

Having seen the forest crystalise in front of his eyes and those caught in it suffer a metamorphisis where their skin becomes encrusted in jewels Ransom still feels drawn to the forest. With the discovery that his former mistress has leprosy, which is of course a theme, and then chooses to take her own life by embracing the other deadly form of transformation.

As he stumbles through the private war between the mine owner and the architect Ventress the army withdraws and the individuals left in the affected zone have to make a decision for themselves about fleeing or embracing death. The priest opts for the later and so do some of the locals. But for the main character the pull back to the crystals and that sense of deciding to embrace the crystals is something that takes time. As a reader you are left sharing that indecision until the very end.

As you come to expect from Ballard the writing is tight, the cast selective and the attention to detail, making the whole thing plausible, is there in abundance. Personally I would run. But facing the pull of the strange lights and the impact on the mind who knows?

A review will follow soon...

The Crystal World - post I

In some respects this book reminds you of both Conrad's Journey into the Heart of Darkness and Greene's novels set in colonial jungles. But this has a more sinister edge. You know that not all is as it seems and as Sanders gets closer to meeting his former mistress in the jungles of a former French colony the silence, mistrust and strange behaviour starts to creep into the narrative.

What is happening finally becomes clear as the jungle starts to demonstrate the effects of crystallisation. Sanders is a leprosy specialist and in turn nature seems diseased and suffering from the impact of some strange process. The natural conclusion to draw is that the local diamond mines have somehow infected the landscape but as Sanders gets closer to the source of the outbreak something different is happening and it has the ability to change everything in its path.

Crystal skinned crocodiles try to break through crystallised streams past glittering trees. Plus this is also happening in the swamps of Florida and somewhere in Russia. Sitting on Sanders shoulder you go into the heart of the jungle and some of the mysteries start to unfold.

More soon...

The Drought - post IV

The book jumps on again and it has been a decade since the drought began. Ransom is holed up with his ex wife and in conflict with the main camp of survivors. He knows that staying by the sea is a doomed enterprise and he manages to reassemble the original party and head back the 100 miles to the city.

On the way they are greeted with fires, destruction and dust. As they get closer the small cast of freakish characters that Ballard had left in the town are still there fighting and squabbling over water.

Ransom seems happy to slide into an existence of doing nothing but waiting for the end as the days and weeks drift by. Even when the people he is staying with start to fight with themselves he seems unable to take decisive action.

It is only close to presumably the end, with all water gone, that he decides to leave, walk off and head out on his own. It is at that point of course at the moment when he faces the biggest challenge of finding himself, or at least rediscovering himself, that the drought ends.

A review will follow soon…

The Drought - post III

The book flips forward to bring the reader into a world post the break down of law and order. The army has gone and the majority of people have died and disappeared as the drought takes hold.

The salt that is produced when the sea is treated blocks the beach and drives the water miles away from the coast.

The party of original escapees lead by Ransom breaks up and heads in different directions all obsessed with the single ambition to find water and survive.

Ransom, like most of Ballard’s leading characters, seems to be in a daze struggling to really recalibrate to changed circumstances. You always sense that he is superior in intellect to most of those around him but in sense of surviving he seems to be doing no better.

More tomorrow…

The Drought - post II

“The man gazed at Ransom with his calm eyes. ‘Sit here and wait’. He gestured around at the camp. ‘This won’t last forever. Already most of these people have only a day’s water left. Sooner or later they’ll break out. My guess is that by the time they reach the water they’ll be thinned out enough for Ethel and me to have all we want.’”

After reading a few Ballard you discover there are certain points in the narrative where things can go one way or the other. As the water runs out Ransom appears to be quite happy staying in the town doing nothing. He keeps telling everyone he will leave but you never quite believe him.

So when the moment comes for him to leave it feels almost unreal with you wondering if he has fully committed to the full implications of the long journey South to the coast.

Again you half wonder if he will stay but the burning city, marauding gangs of fishermen and zoo animals wandering the streets have made that perhaps not a real option.

Once he reaches the coast with a motley band of people he has picked up and dragged out of the city the true horror of the mass of people waiting for water hits them. The sea, covered in a film of chemicals that stop it from evaporating normally, is blockaded by the army and a sense of restlessness is beginning to take over.

The Drought - post I

Carrying on with the JG Ballard theme picked up The Drought. In a way the first reaction is to view it as the opposite of Drowned World with a collection of characters struggling to cope with no water.

The lake is running out of water, returning to mud flats and caked earth and in the midst of it is Ransom a man who like some many of Ballard’s characters seems to be lost. His wife has left him and as the world falls apart he seems to be happy spending time in solitude working out how he can reconnect with it.

Already though there is the tension that seems to be another theme of Ballard’s work where people have to make choices. Do you stay and face what is potentially a death sentence or do you follow the herd and chase the water at the coast? How Ransom answers that question is presumably going to be how the book unfolds.

More tomorrow…

book review - High Rise - JG Ballard

“Later, 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.”

There is something horrendously real about High Rise. Perhaps it is because the sort of place that Ballard was describing with some sort of prophetic vision now dominates the skyline of the capital. The large tower blocks that are meant to be worlds in themselves with pools, gyms and essential supplies are now the sorts of places that litter the banks of the Thames and docklands. It was perhaps with Docklands firmly in mind that I pictured the events described in this disturbing book unfold.

If you had to recommend a starting place to anyone wanting to find out what Ballard was all about then this would be a very good one.

It encapsulates all that he was writing about. What would happen to normal people when their lives were pushed into some sort of cauldron? How would it look as society breaks down? He works with a canvas of a 40 storey tower block. But within the block there are different strata of society split by their height from the ground, with those at the top being the richest and most influential. The main character Dr Laing is based on the 25th floor providing a balanced view of the slide into chaos.

Once things start to fall apart the world of the high rise becomes sealed off and the move into violence, cannibalism and complete barbarity I not too long following. What Ballard manages to do is make it all seem relatively believable. It is of course looking at life in a mirror that is warped but it never becomes too strange to make it seem as if it could never happen.

It is that sense that given the right conditions that this sort of thing might happen, which is the key. Ballard takes relatively innocuous objects like lifts, car parking spaces and balcony views and turns them into something dangerous and significant. There are clearly losers in the collapse of social order in the high rise but it is hard to see who the victors are. By the end those who stay in the building have entered into some collective madness that would make it hard to claw back from.

But where Ballard is particularly chilling is in the idea that what you assume is happening in an isolated pocket of madness could in fact be a scenario being played out across the world. Some of his other books do make things a worldwide phenomenon like the drought but here it is the sense that no one really knows what is happening in or outside the high rise that is so disconcerting.

As an introduction to Ballard’s particular themes of the influence on social order of man made technology this is a very good starting point that cannot be recommended highly enough. It is a story with a start, middle and an end but the haunting images of the high rise play out in your mind long after you have finished the book.

book review - The Drowned World - JG Ballard

As you read this book you can almost feel the heat and are scared to look up at the sun as the destructive nature of solar power is described in a way that is almost prophetic.

Ballard sets the story in a world where the polar ice caps have melted and the oceans have risen and London is underwater with just the tops of the buildings visible and liveable.

In that environment a biological and military team are collecting samples before following the rest of the global population to the only cool place at the pole. But the power of the sun, the power of nature to regain a manmade environment and the primeval urge that some people experience makes it a battle to leave.

Add to that mental strain, with the dreams of a primeval world, the letargy caused by heat and it becomes a life of crablike scuttles in the heat from building to building, lagoon to lagoon.

At the heart of the story is a biologist Kerans who is not sure if he will leave. He escapes the moment when the military crew depart and is left with a fellow biologist Bodkin and a rather cold woman Beatrice Dahlo, who seems determined to cling to her apartment. Her selfishness is one of the potential responses that an individual could have to the situation.

Another is to take Bodkin’s path and be lost in a haze of sentimentality and longing for the drowned world that can still be glimpsed below the water but not recaptured.

At that point it feels like a very well written short story that could have ended with a question mark but Ballard introduces the bizarre and frightening character of Strangman who has the technology to drain parts of the city and return London to its pre drowned state. He is fighting the drowning world.

That throws up the biggest challenge to those unsure of where to go. The ghostly world of the past potentially could restore them but it makes the moment of choice even more inevitable. Either you fight nature or you abandon yourself to it.

That choice, set against a brilliantly described world or water, crocodiles and heat, is so well played out that even at the end you are not quite sure what Kerans will do. Having made that choice the reader is given a glimpse with the discovery of a character Hardman who previously made the escape towards the equator what lies ahead. Despite that Kerans carries on South and carries onto the point where he will join nature and the drowned world in every sense.

High Rise - post II

As the high rise falls apart in terms of infrastructure with the water, lifts and power all becoming intermittent the lives of those inside also falls apart. Each floor becomes tribal hunting in groups to secure food and luxuries from those who live around them. The death, a fall from the top floor of a businessman, marks a watershed where violence is acceptable.

The cast of characters that Ballard describes have to question themselves as they start the slide back into a primeval state. Some fade quickly without the strength to defend themselves whereas others emerge as leaders.

The disturbing nature of the story is nnot just how quickly man can turn on man but the manner in which the residents are so determined not to break the world they are living in that external influences are kept at bay.

Ballard makes you think. As you move through a modern landscape surrounded by the everyday objects he uses as a backdrop you are challenged to think about the chances of his fiction becoming fact. In High Rise those chances are slightly more than extremely remote and as a result the book leaves you disturbed but provoked.

A review will come soon…

High Rise - post I

One observation that you have to make about Ballard before you even start is that he manages to get the names of his characters just right. A name in Ballard’s world has to stand for many things. Take an architect for example. The name has to conjure up the image of a successful man, someone who has a certain position in society and as a result someone who thinks and behaves a certain way.

So we are introduced to a character that lives just above the middle of a 40 storey tower block. On the 25th floor he can look out on the floors below but is within a quick elevator ride of the delights of the world above.

But slowly but surely Ballard starts to take the world of the high rise, with its swimming pools, schools and shops and turns it into a fearful world. A society based on floors, bands from 1-10, 11-30 and then above emerge. The tenants start fighting each other at first verbally and in terms of anti-social behaviour. But as the days go by society starts to break down.

As a reader you are constantly asking yourself how this could happen knowing that given the right circumstances and time it well might. Of course things are speeded up in Ballard’s account but otherwise the breakdown of society and the movement towards violence and animal behaviour is very believable.

More tomorrow…

book review - Millennium People - J.G. Ballard

It is a shame that it took the death of J.J. Ballard to get me to sit down and read his last short story about the collapsing tower of Pisa in the Guardian. In just a few hundred words he managed to take the blinkers of my eyes and show me that science fiction need not be about space men and aliens. It is about taking a scene of apparent normality and bending it through a refractor of great imagination.

As a result he tells a story that has a mixture of the mundane and the fantastical sitting alongside each other. The mundane is the Chelsea Marina, the baggage area at Heathrow and the long-stay car park at the airport. The fantastic is the bombs, middle class terrorists and the slide from respectability to the brink of murder and insanity of a corporate psychologist.

Millennium People is not just addressing the anxiety of the turn of the millennium but also questioning the society that has been built up and so ingrained that even a shift from one century to another has no impact.

In the middle is Dr David Markham who watches with incredulity as he first wife is involved in a bombing at Heathrow airport. Given the freedom by his relaxed and selfish wife to pursue his ambition to track down the bombers Markham becomes embroiled in a different world.

On the face of it this world is visible behind the curtains twitching in suburbia but the depth of the determination to unsettle the state and shake the middle class out of their stupor takes a bit more digging to locate.

But Markham does locate it and manages to not only find the bombers of his first wife but find himself. He gets to ask himself all sorts of questions about the lines he is prepared to cross as he is put in the position of taking lives as part of the cause. He is even given the chance to take lives in the spirit of retribution.

But this psychologist with a belief that God is a grand scheme invented to placate the masses is attracted to a similar view held by those arguing that the middle classes are equally led blind folded into believing their lives are alright. In fact they are propping up a failing system with their taxes and determination to make the world a better place. That middle class charitable attitude is in fact their weakness.

As Ballard gets his characters to strip that back he exposes some major questions that in this era of the war against terror could not be more topical. If no one listens to you quite how do you get attention? He also makes you think about the character and personality of those that manipulate and coordinate terror as much as he gets you to consider those allowing themselves to be dragged along.

Clever but also accessible and with healthy levels of humour as reintroduction to Ballard after many years absence after reading Empire of the Sun at school this was a real eye opener. This might well be one of my favourite books of the year but I have a sneaking suspicion that the more Ballard I read the more times I will be close to making that judgement call.

Drowned World - post III

Just as life in the hot but bearable drowned world of London becomes stable and Kernans for now has put his desire to embrace the return to the neo-Triassic period on hold Ballard twists the story again.

The waters of the lagoon are disturbed by the alligator army that accompanies the pirates and looters of Strangman’s private army. This odd figure, who in many respects represents the past but as a result is like a ghost, shakes up the trio. He drains the lagoon and forces them to confront the past and contemplate the future.

But Kernans cannot put off his search for an alternative and as the pressure to fight the water, heat and the inevitability of the future overtakes those around him he strikes out for the South. There he meets Hardman a visible reminder of the death that waits but he cannot stop his journey as a "second Adam searching for the forgotten paradise of the reborn sun”.

A review will come eventually…

Drowned World - post II

The tension builds up over the question of whether or not the main character Kernans will depart as the rest of the soldiers and scientists head for the cooler climate of the North. Beatrice, who Kernans seems to be semi-enchanted by, it is clear is not leaving so that raises the prospect that there might be others prepared to stay.

One of them emerges early with one of the soldiers Hardman running off to follow his desire to head for the South. That leaves Kernans, who starts having dreams that are the start of some primeval urge to return to the swamps, waiting to weigh up his own mind.

The decision to stay, which you always suspected, comes quickly and Kernans is not alone with fellow colleague Bodkin helping him scuttles the scientific research station and retreat to different corners of the lagoon. Bodkin cannot leave because of his memories of London under the water and Kernans cannot leave because like Hardman, like all the dreamers, he is being called back to the South.

More soon…

The Drowned World - post I

One of the great joys of this year has been discovering JG Ballard. Following on from Millennium People the Drowned World shows him flexing his imagination even more with London flooded and inhabited by giant mosquitoes and lizards.

For those of us used to the idea of global warming this is of course a nightmare prophecy that might well come true. But the skill in the writing is that after just a few pages an environment of waterways, lagoons of abandoned office blocks and giant reptiles has become clear in the reader’s mind.

This is not done in a way that might put you off with too much description and explanation. If anything the real horror of the situation is the casualness with which Ballard describes how the world has heated up and how the human race is slowly dying out.

More tomorrow…

Millennium People - post V

This book has not only been a pleasure to read but reminds you of just why those authors that bend reality, Vonnegut is another that springs to mind, can ask some very important questions but couch them in humour and against a background that is slightly surreal.

The result of reading about disaffected lawyers and doctors planning to use terror as a way of over throwing attitudes in society could be grim if it was not done in such a way that all sides of the argument were shown in a sympathetic light leaving the reader to answer their own questions. Ballard manages to do that because Markham is in the middle. Not just in terms of relationships but in his own mind.

At the climax it is his own inability to resort to violence that confronts him and helps him go back to his middle class life. Seeing the horror that can be caused by hatred and fanaticism he pulls back from the brink. Although understanding the idea of a random motiveless attack he could never carry one out and could never really condone that action.

in the current climate with the war on terror still raging this is a book that makes you think. it's not just about class and apathy but also about terror and what it will take to shake us out of our slumbers. But there is a clear warning in the form of Gould that behind the entusiasts and the politically commited are the fanatics ready to kill and maim for personal pleasure more than to prove any particular point.

A review will follow soon...

Millennium People - post IV

Increasingly Markham finds himself caught between the two groups of active but relatively contained protesters at Chelsea Marina with Kay and the residents blocking the streets, fighting with police and burning their homes in protest.

Meanwhile Gould seems to have split away and each time he meets with Markham things get darker. As it emerges that he did in fact plant the Heathrow bomb, kill the TV presenter and have involvement with the Tate bomb the danger to Markham ratchets up a notch. he was the intended target in the airport and he seems to remain as a target for Gould. By now the doctor working with children abandoned by their families because of their mental illnesses and short-term futures has clearly lost his grip on reality. No longer working in an official sense and no longer able to curb his interest in violence he leaves Markham in a car park in heathrow postponing the final confrontation.

Back at Chelsea Marina the police swoop and the bailiffs come kicking through the doors and the middle classes abandon their protest. Their attempts to undermine the status quo by attacking video shops, refusing to pay for private schools and trying to prick the balloon of the system ends with a two fingered salute which is willingly misunderstood by the authorities.

More tomorrow...

Millennium People - post III

Markham finds himself getting deeper into the fight with Kay Churchill (ironic last name there) and some of the more determined residents on the Chelsea marina site. Along with a deranged ex-MOD explosives expert Markham finds himself setting light to the NFT and experiencing the thrill of violence. As his second wife starts an affair so too Markham moves into Kay's house and despite her obsessions and willingness to abandon Markham at the first sign of trouble he is intoxicated by the action.

As a psychologist he fools himself into thinking that some how he is detached from events but as he draws closer to the damaged Dr Gould he has to face the question that actually he is not able to stay on the fringes forever. he is bridging the gap between the enthusiastic amateur in the shape of Churchill and the fundamentalist in Gould.

What starts to bring things to a head are the duel events of a bomb exploding in the Tate killing the girlfriend of one of the protesters as well as a Jill Dando type shooting of a TV presenter on her own doorstep. Markham is trying to find something but faces losing himself in the process. Is that the real danger of getting involved with protests that as it knocks you out of your comfort zone you face questions of just how far you are prepared to go? Would you kill someone? Maybe not but can you always prevent that and how do you counter the buzz you get from the possibility?

More tomorrow...