Great filming, writing and editing. You are making a big contribution to SF history & scholarship. I hope you get a nice book deal - or indeed a documentary commission - soon.
You're very kind, Super-Thanks makes all the difference here. I'm simply too busy making YT videos, working and trying to get through polymyalgia to write anything- two of my three nonfiction books are still in print and still sell. My Ballard pieces can be read in 'Deep Ends' (Terminal Press) in the 2016, 2018 and 2019 editions (the 2018 is the best one, the 2019 a short story homaging Ballard's "The Venus Hunters"). All available on Amazon. I am hoping to start writing fiction again before too long- next year maybe- as I have two small publishers interested.
I’ve only read Concrete Island, when I was about fifteen. I realised it wasn’t SF, but it didn’t stop me from finishing it and referencing it often. Looking back, if I had to surmise it, it’s really about those people who end up in the gaps between techno-modernities-stranded, ignored, destitute, primitive, mad, and obscene. High-Rise I couldn’t finish-it just didn’t do it for me, even though I was looking forward to it.
You see, I think these books ARE actually SF: what Ballard did was change the genre- those books are about how the human mind is changed by technology- both the high rise block and traffic island are products of technology and in these novels, he stretched their potential five minutes into the future, into times where someone could get stranded beneath a traffic island and where a high rise erupted into atavistic tribalism. As those things had not happened at that point, as they were possibilities that lay in a future, they are SF.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I can understand that perspective. Maybe it’s a matter of them being true *sociological* SF, while still intersecting with technological concerns. Not to muddle things up with my own drab stuff, but I myself have a short story wherein compulsive gamblers are herded into homes where they can supposedly gamble to their heart’s content, a work which I’ve described to other people as speculative fiction. (It was actually my first published short story.) Also: wasn’t the term “slipstream” coined to specifically describe Ballard’s later work?
Striking, challenging stuff -- I read it all in the '70s, and still have the short story collections and disaster novels (thanks for the tip about The Wind From Nowhere, I'll be sure to hang on to my copy). The background images in this post are perfect, they look like the '60s-built concrete college I attended, but more decrepit. I'm overdue for a re-read of a lot of this. Tried sharing the early stuff with my wife, who admired Empire Of The Sun, but she would have none of it.
Ballard is too much for many, sadly. She should maybe have a look at 'The Kindness of Women', the sequel to 'Empire..' and his autobiography, 'Miracles of Life'.
Hi Stephen. Never could get along with Ballard. Way back when I read Crash and Concrete Island and came away totally confused and unimpressed. I read The Drought quite recently and, quite frankly, I found it tedious and unsatisfying because, I think, I couldn't make a connection with the protagonist and all the Pirate Bikers stuff reminded me of a b-movie from Netflix. So fast forward to last month when I had a bash at The Atrocity Exhibition . . .WTF ??
Hey Kenny, good to hear from you. The thing with Ballard is that he has to appeal to you semi-subconsciously, hence his interest in Surrealism which had some of its roots in psychoanalysis. In other words, his work is not usually rational or explicable in the way that most SF is. I love his stuff personally, which I guess says a lot about me LOL!
Can't stress Ballards influence enough. Seen him going in and out of fashion several times by now. As much as I miss Ballard as a voice in current literature, I miss Simon Sellars' awesome Ballardian blog, I discovered around the time of reading Kingdom Come. As of now I'm very much in the process of going back to re-discovering his output.
Short video essays like this would be great to see more often! Not necessarily on SF, but on whatever literary subject or theme interests you and you want to set to images. I honestly loved this; it would have made my film professors and my film industry teachers happy. Cheers from Canada.
Thanks. I love shooting outdoors- there are many travel shoots here (my ones of Capri, Italy are full of literary references to the many writers who lived and worked on the island) and there is more outdoor stuff on my new channel, Walking Bookseller.
Very tidy little film OB.I predict an upsurge in clicks I highly recommend The Wind From Nowhere - Ballard's prose impressively maintains the sound and fury of the wind on every page. He never lets it fade from your mind as you're reading it. An impressive debut novel unfairly disowned by him IMO.
Greetings from Belgium. I discovered Ballard's work in 1980 when I was a 18 year 'old' teenager, and the first novel was The Burning World/The Drought - and I was hooked. Years later I discovered a first print of The Wind From Nowhere, published in January 1962 - I was born in January 1962...
Walking/Outlaw Bookseller crossover! Great idea and well done. I've never read any Ballard, although I have a couple of his short stories (Prima Belladonna and Cage of Sand) in The Ascent of Wonder (1994, Hartwell and Cramer, eds.). I'll be sure to check him out. Thanks, Steve!
"Prima Belladonna" is one of his very earliest stories, one of the 'Vermilion Sands' tales, a great book to start reading JGB with. My 10,000 plus word essay in 'Deep Ends 2018' (fully illustrated in colour with pics by myself), which is entitled "Me: Capri" Brigitte Bardot' is a look at how my Italian holidays intersect with Ballard's work....
Excellent, very inspiring video -- those soundscapes and suburban landscapes are totally Ballardian. 'The Drowned World' and 'The Crystal World' have a whiff of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' about them.
Excellent video. Love Ballard. Great editing. I was thinking about JGB the other day walking around Le Lignon housing estate here in Geneva. It has(had?) the title of being Europe’s longest building.
What you said about characters embracing the weird new worlds in which they find themselves: it's what I initially responded to in Clive Barker (whose _Weaveworld_ Ballard favourably blurbed). Indeed, being an equal science fiction and horror fan at that time (1980s) I recall approaching Ballard's "Urban Trilogy" from the perspective of a horror fan. Great novels! 👍 Have read all his short stories and a good chunk of his early novels. As to his later novels, I agree with yourself and Matt at Bookpilled: _Super Cannes_ is terrific. I currently have _Empire of the Sun_ and _Kindness of Women_ on my TBR for later this year...
Yes, there is definitely Horror in Ballard, even in early stories and definitely in the 1970s material. I told Matt some time ago that 'Super-Cannes' is the finest late Ballard and of course it is in my book '100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels' - my copy was given to me by Ballard (to be specific, he signed a copy and asked them to pass it on to me via their sales rep - and his partner Claire...who is the basis for Helen Remington in 'Crash' came into my bookshop at the location of this video to take me to lunch at JG's request, but I was away on holiday- I was of course gutted).
My first Ballard was The Drought with that beautiful green Flamingo 60s cover. I think one reads Ballard more for the intensity of the images and the beauty of the writing, rather than for plot or characters, which is why he is so different from most fiction and most SF. I find his books very sensuous and immersive, but at the same time psychologically very strange and alienating - a reading experience unlike anything else. Did you see that the theme for this year's Met Gala - the annual display of extreme wealth in New York - was the 1962 Ballard short story The Garden of Time? A truly bizarre decision: the story is about a wealthy aristocratic couple who pluck flowers from their magical time garden in order to delay the approach of an angry and impoverished mob which eventually overwhelms their castle.
Yes, the Met Gala thing was widely commented upon by Ballardians. And you're correct, the imagery is key. One 'understands' Ballard indirectly, subsconsciously, I think , which is very Freudian and consequently explains the links to Surrealism.
I picked up that Penguin copy of The Wind from Nowhere yesterday (the inverted tank cover) here in France, having read again The Drowned World a few weeks ago. I used The Crystal World in an undergrad paper many years ago, comparing and contrasting a Disch and an Aldiss (can't remember which, now!). And while doing an M.A. in Modern English Literature I introduced my cohort to Crash, not all of whom were impressed (too graphic for many of them). So yes, Ballard has been an undercurrent for me for most of my adult life! I had nearly all of the books at one time but am now having to rebuild the collection ...
I'm finding I've fallen into the 'multiple editions zone' with Ballard, which is absurd given that I have signed firsts of almost everything...but he's a writer you can never have too much of!
There is already one on the channel, from the early days, one of my most watched clips- it's about why you should read 'Junky' before tackling 'Naked Lunch'. Review the videos by 'most popular' and you'll find it. I must do more on WSB really, as I love his stuff so much....
Terrific video Steve....I came to Ballard through his short stories when I found them in various collections and then fell completely under his spell when working in London in the 80's and 90's which coincided with many of the novels being republished. Although far from his best work, I always point the uninitiated towards Hello America as it reads like a conventional adventure but with just enough Ballardian strangeness to make you want to seek out more. It also has some particularly startling imagery as the expedition arrives in an abandoned New York.
Thanks. Yes, 'Hello America' is an odd one, one of his transitional novels- the recurrence of the postapocalyptic motif but with a Baudrillardian look at the USA...it seems to prefigure 'The Day of Creation' too, I'd say. Ballard's imagery is always stunning, right.
I read my first Ballard books - The Drowned World, Kingdom Come, Crash, Concrete Island, and High Rise - just two years ago thanks to you, Steve. I enjoyed them all. Absolutely loved this little 'introduction'. Beautifully filmed (in a concrete and steel kind of way), thoughtfully edited, and - as with so many of your videos - totally inspiring.
Great video. Some screen caps could be Ballard covers. Just did a reread of The Killing Ground a few days ago in a collection I'm reading. A bleak satire of the Viet Nam' War.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I guess being a troubled teen, running away from home and being completely smitten with graffiti, the places inbetween, the concrete stantions and man made caves these structures offered were secret playgrounds and havens in a way. When I illegally painted them they gave me a freedom as much as they symbolised ennui and a type of brutalist facist hopelessness. I love Ballard. Thank you to him and to you for keeping it all alive.
Thank you. Yes, his shorts are excellent. Do watch the backlist there are other Ballard videos here, more to come and lots of other New Wave SF content.
Fantastic💥 Love this format, great to see an SF/-video with original complimentary images instead of the reviewer/channel owner talking. Great material, would love to see more of this format now and then! Best/Felix
Thanks Felix - I love shooting outdoors as you know from my many walking/travel videos on the channel in which I often mention SF. The big problem is finding suitable locations that conjure up the right imagery that are also lacking hordes of people milling around- so when I can make this work, I will do more like this.
Great video Steve, very interesting! I appreciated the tour of the University and it all seemed so familiar....but then it really wasn't familiar with all the new builds! I kept wondering what is now where the old shop used to be!
Hey Simon, glad to hear you enjoyed this- those were great days we shared back then and viewers of this channel have you to thank for getting me back into SF when my interest had waned for some time. The building the shop was in is still there, largely unchanged- but the rest of the campus has been built over so much, it is like a Ballardian space as you see...
Excellent video touching on some of the concepts of our last conversation! Thanks, Steve Personally makes me all the more excited to see how Vandermeer takes up the ecological disaster legacy in the fourth and final Southern Reach book.
Yes!! Definitely some fantastic camera work and editing here. Commentary is great as always - and I think the audio is better than usual? Sounds better to my ear at least. I also love the juxtaposition of the cinematography with the commentary. Somehow each enriches the other in an understated way, more so than usual. Perhaps because of the focus on landscape and architecture in Ballard himself (I sadly haven't read him, but from your commentary, that is my impression).
Thanks Jozef, good to hear from you as ever. Yes, I used a different mic, but I hate doing voiceovers, though I must say I was pleased with the results. I usually prefer to speak on location, but you don't always get the best results that way. It is often hard to find suitable locations for outdoor SF shoots, but as I come across them, I shoot them- if you look ay my first Keith Roberts video- where I visit the places some of his books are set at, that's a good example. The urban environment is key in Ballard's works, especially from the 1970s onward.
Very well-conceived episode, OB. You've given us a very insightful explanation of what Ballard is all about. And the concrete, metal and glass of the structures you wandered around was a fine touch. As always, your commentary is top shelf, and it was yet another great experience for me here on the Outlaw Bookseller channel. :) Cheers!
Interesting how you were able to evoke Ballard in some of these sites. Definitely Ballardian. At 2;01, even the outbuilding/service shed made me think of the array of outbuildings in "The Terminal Beach"; just one example. I'm so in awe of Ballard, I really can't come up with any to say other than "SF" doesn't even come to encapsulating his work. He really does break through into another reality, the one that informs this one. As much as I love PKD, I think what makes Ballard so amazing is his ability to take in all that raw power of the unconscious without being overwhelmed by it, and without needing drugs. His sanity--his ability to hang onto it--when deep-sea diving into the unconscious, is what makes him so formidable. He's the guy you want to be in the foxhole with, not PKD. Just my opinion. Thanks, Outlaw, for the wonderful video.
@@timcoombs2780 Maybe you could answer this question for me. Do you know if some of this architecture would be considered brutalism? And is that grassed-over amphitheater?
It most certainly is an amphitheatre! A nice place to sit and eat lunch on a sunny day as long as you don’t mind being mugged by ducks! The main university buildings were built in the 1960s and so have a certain brutalistic aspect to them. It’s only seeing them like this that I realised just how ugly they are! I guess I just took them for granted when I was there!
Anyone looking for slightly obscure filmed Ballard could do worse than BBC4's Home with a compelling central performance from the late, great Anthony Sher . Last aired in 2009 apparently...
Many thanks! ST is the lifeblood of this channel, I'm v grateful. I love shooting outdoors, but of course it's often hard to find locations that suit the material, especially for SF!
I've been enjoying your videos for a long time now but have never got round to actually telling you how much I appreciate them (you introduced me to the really rather wonderful Christopher Priest and M. John Harrison, among many, many others), so where better to do this under a video about my favourite author? I'd be interested on hearing your thoughts (either here, or maybe, if you have the time and inclination, in a separate video...?) about that in-between-y, rarely-talked-about period of Ballard's work covering The Day of Creation, Running Wild, The Kindness of Women and Rushing to Paradise. Anyway, superb video as always! 🙂
A stylistic departure for you, but excellent work nonetheless. Strangely, you've taken a distinctly 'Moidian' turn with this vid, although not your intention. Visually you allow us to wander Ballardian mindscapes. Canonical.
While I'm alarmed at the notion of being 'Moidian' (as you say far from my intention - I mention 'The Blazing World' as an aside months ago, having read it decades ago, he does a whole video about it) I'm glad you enjoyed it. I very, very rarely do voiceover videos- I absolutely hate doing them, I'd rather free-form, I find the tech for voiceover ungainly. I think I've an established tradition of shooting outdoors- I did my first outdoor SF reviews (Cordwainer Smith) before even Matt of Bookpilled started doing them- and like Matt, I love filming in beautiful places. But this location needed a voiceover, as I shot the footage a couple of months ago. It's actually a University campus where I once mamaged the bookshop for a total of ten years, an experience that was my most profitable and enjoyable in all my years in managing shops. I've now gone fifteen years in the trade without managing and I miss it hugely.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Don't be alarmed. It's not a dig at either of you, just an observation - perhaps platform shapes performance? App is Destiny?
looks like publisher "Fourth Estate" has a new paperback edition coming out in August (for Canada anyways). not sure the mechanics of "buy links" for your channel but you should be getting paid for driving traffic their way :)
There are no 'buy links'. In theory I should add some, but I found it impossible to actually do this with Amazon due to the entirely non-intuitive nature of their system.
There is a brilliant short story by Charles Platt entitled "The Disaster Story" which is basically a list of the cliches and common elements of the post-catastrophe tale - it's entirely satisfactory in itself and also works as a bit of pre-Ballardian disaster fiction criticism.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thank ye! I might add that to the Loooong list of books/stories to look for. I have to say though, that after reading Garbage World this year, Platt is one author I would only return to by direct recommendation.
@@OmnivorousReader In that case, it may well be that New Wave SF (including Ballard) is not for you- but having said that, 'Garbage World' is not Platt at his best-I'd give that accolade to 'The City Dwellers'.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I have heard that about City Dwellers before, I am on the lookout for it. I quite like Ballard, I found The Drowned World pretty fascinating and swampy. I remember really liking Ballard when I was younger but Garbage World was my first Platt. I might just not have been prepared - it was certainly memorable and I might re-read it sometime just to see. New Wave? Some I like, some less so; Zelazny I adore, Sturgeon and Damon Knight, Delany and Ellison I am pretty enthusiastic about. Le Guin I enjoy... Could go on... will certainly go on reading 'em...
@@OmnivorousReader Well, you're mostly talking about US New Wave there, the canon of which is drawn from Ellison's 'Dangerous Visions'. Sturgeon and Knight obviously predate the 1960s. British New Wave is more definitive, being firmly based on Modernism in terms of difficulty of style and less on taboo breaking, though this is an element. Because of their presence in London in the late 1960s, Delany, Spinrad, Disch, Saldek and Sallis (all of whom were published in 'New Worlds' magazine) are more definitively New Wave than say Zelazny, Ellison or LeGuin, though they played their parts. All great stuff from my perspective.
Yes, they've overbuilt on all the beautiful green spaces that used to be there- we were reviewing this back on the plasma just now and Pat- who as you know worked up there for years- said how ugly many of the new builds are.
I've just read the wind from nowhere and the drowned world. I'd like to read in order. Should i move on to terminal beach or the drought? I also have the four dimensional nightmare/ the voices of time would that fit into the tetralogy or should i come back to it later? thanks
Well, if you wanted to read Ballard's work in order of publication, you'd go with short stories first: in fact, 'Vermilion Sands' (which conflates all the stories in the eponymous sequence, set in a place that is half mediterranean resort, half southern US desert) is arguably a novel in the way Bradbury's 'The Martian Chonicles' is (i.e. acolelction of stories in the same setting). The early collections of stories differ in content depending on if you have US or UK editions. A good idea is to go with the earliest collections - originally entitled 'The Four Dimensional Nightmare' and 'The Overloaded Man' and use isfdb as a bibliographic reference to content.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal thanks for the response am i correct in assuming the complete short stories collection has everything I would need not including the novels?
@@sw4glyfe Pretty much. They're in chronological order, but I personally find reading shorter collections more enjoyable and contextually better for focusing on an author at a specific point in time.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Awesome, thank you. Any recommendations for shorter collections? I have the terminal beach, the overloaded man and myths of the near future already.
He also said in the 90s that the Feminists and the Islamists would form an alliance. (a) He was right. (b) it's not boring right now is it? He would have loved the everyday lunacy we see now.
His last few books (from ‘Cocaine Nights’ onwards) were really hitting the mark with comments about contemporary culture, it would be very interesting indeed to see what he could conjure up!
mr ballard . we here salute you.
We certainly do!
Great filming, writing and editing. You are making a big contribution to SF history & scholarship. I hope you get a nice book deal - or indeed a documentary commission - soon.
You're very kind, Super-Thanks makes all the difference here. I'm simply too busy making YT videos, working and trying to get through polymyalgia to write anything- two of my three nonfiction books are still in print and still sell. My Ballard pieces can be read in 'Deep Ends' (Terminal Press) in the 2016, 2018 and 2019 editions (the 2018 is the best one, the 2019 a short story homaging Ballard's "The Venus Hunters"). All available on Amazon. I am hoping to start writing fiction again before too long- next year maybe- as I have two small publishers interested.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal couldn’t agree more. Incredible resource.
The music not so much, though!
@@wonderworld1928 Can you clarify? You're saying you didn't like the music?
@@wonderworld1928 oh, I loved the music! But then I listen to drone and atonal music to relax. Just be glad that I am not your neighbour!
I’ve only read Concrete Island, when I was about fifteen.
I realised it wasn’t SF, but it didn’t stop me from finishing it and referencing it often.
Looking back, if I had to surmise it, it’s really about those people who end up in the gaps between techno-modernities-stranded, ignored, destitute, primitive, mad, and obscene.
High-Rise I couldn’t finish-it just didn’t do it for me, even though I was looking forward to it.
You see, I think these books ARE actually SF: what Ballard did was change the genre- those books are about how the human mind is changed by technology- both the high rise block and traffic island are products of technology and in these novels, he stretched their potential five minutes into the future, into times where someone could get stranded beneath a traffic island and where a high rise erupted into atavistic tribalism. As those things had not happened at that point, as they were possibilities that lay in a future, they are SF.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I can understand that perspective.
Maybe it’s a matter of them being true *sociological* SF, while still intersecting with technological concerns.
Not to muddle things up with my own drab stuff, but I myself have a short story wherein compulsive gamblers are herded into homes where they can supposedly gamble to their heart’s content, a work which I’ve described to other people as speculative fiction. (It was actually my first published short story.)
Also: wasn’t the term “slipstream” coined to specifically describe Ballard’s later work?
Striking, challenging stuff -- I read it all in the '70s, and still have the short story collections and disaster novels (thanks for the tip about The Wind From Nowhere, I'll be sure to hang on to my copy). The background images in this post are perfect, they look like the '60s-built concrete college I attended, but more decrepit. I'm overdue for a re-read of a lot of this. Tried sharing the early stuff with my wife, who admired Empire Of The Sun, but she would have none of it.
Ballard is too much for many, sadly. She should maybe have a look at 'The Kindness of Women', the sequel to 'Empire..' and his autobiography, 'Miracles of Life'.
Hi Stephen. Never could get along with Ballard. Way back when I read Crash and Concrete Island and came away totally confused and unimpressed. I read The Drought quite recently and, quite frankly, I found it tedious and unsatisfying because, I think, I couldn't make a connection with the protagonist and all the Pirate Bikers stuff reminded me of a b-movie from Netflix.
So fast forward to last month when I had a bash at The Atrocity Exhibition . . .WTF ??
Hey Kenny, good to hear from you. The thing with Ballard is that he has to appeal to you semi-subconsciously, hence his interest in Surrealism which had some of its roots in psychoanalysis. In other words, his work is not usually rational or explicable in the way that most SF is. I love his stuff personally, which I guess says a lot about me LOL!
This video is freaking beautiful! I absolutely love everything about it.
Many thanks. Do share on your social media, we need views here!
Can't stress Ballards influence enough. Seen him going in and out of fashion several times by now. As much as I miss Ballard as a voice in current literature, I miss Simon Sellars' awesome Ballardian blog, I discovered around the time of reading Kingdom Come. As of now I'm very much in the process of going back to re-discovering his output.
He becomes increasingly relevant, I find.
Short video essays like this would be great to see more often! Not necessarily on SF, but on whatever literary subject or theme interests you and you want to set to images. I honestly loved this; it would have made my film professors and my film industry teachers happy. Cheers from Canada.
Thanks. I love shooting outdoors- there are many travel shoots here (my ones of Capri, Italy are full of literary references to the many writers who lived and worked on the island) and there is more outdoor stuff on my new channel, Walking Bookseller.
The artwork (of his covers) is always top notch!
Visual artists find Ballard inspiring, I think, as his imagery is so strong.
Very tidy little film OB.I predict an upsurge in clicks
I highly recommend The Wind From Nowhere - Ballard's prose impressively maintains the sound and fury of the wind on every page. He never lets it fade from your mind as you're reading it. An impressive debut novel unfairly disowned by him IMO.
As I said in the video, I think Ballard himself underrated it. I think it's a good read, I have two copies and have read it three times.
It all came together for you in this video. Well done!
Thanks. Check out my Keith Roberts video- the one with the Chris Foss thumbnial- it's even more together there.
JGB
We love ye
Wherever thou be
We love thee
Greetings from Belgium. I discovered Ballard's work in 1980 when I was a 18 year 'old' teenager, and the first novel was The Burning World/The Drought - and I was hooked. Years later I discovered a first print of The Wind From Nowhere, published in January 1962 - I was born in January 1962...
Great to hear from Belgium, more Ballard coming up soon and dig back into the channel and you'll see some Ballard collecting videos.
Walking/Outlaw Bookseller crossover! Great idea and well done. I've never read any Ballard, although I have a couple of his short stories (Prima Belladonna and Cage of Sand) in The Ascent of Wonder (1994, Hartwell and Cramer, eds.). I'll be sure to check him out. Thanks, Steve!
"Prima Belladonna" is one of his very earliest stories, one of the 'Vermilion Sands' tales, a great book to start reading JGB with. My 10,000 plus word essay in 'Deep Ends 2018' (fully illustrated in colour with pics by myself), which is entitled "Me: Capri" Brigitte Bardot' is a look at how my Italian holidays intersect with Ballard's work....
Excellent, very inspiring video -- those soundscapes and suburban landscapes are totally Ballardian. 'The Drowned World' and 'The Crystal World' have a whiff of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' about them.
Undoubtedly. Amis may have said that first, but it is absolutely true. I always think Lucius Shepard owes much to Ballard, but no-one ever says this.
Excellent video. Love Ballard. Great editing. I was thinking about JGB the other day walking around Le Lignon housing estate here in Geneva. It has(had?) the title of being Europe’s longest building.
Ballard is all around us wherever there are Modern urban spaces...
What you said about characters embracing the weird new worlds in which they find themselves: it's what I initially responded to in Clive Barker (whose _Weaveworld_ Ballard favourably blurbed). Indeed, being an equal science fiction and horror fan at that time (1980s) I recall approaching Ballard's "Urban Trilogy" from the perspective of a horror fan. Great novels! 👍 Have read all his short stories and a good chunk of his early novels. As to his later novels, I agree with yourself and Matt at Bookpilled: _Super Cannes_ is terrific. I currently have _Empire of the Sun_ and _Kindness of Women_ on my TBR for later this year...
Yes, there is definitely Horror in Ballard, even in early stories and definitely in the 1970s material. I told Matt some time ago that 'Super-Cannes' is the finest late Ballard and of course it is in my book '100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels' - my copy was given to me by Ballard (to be specific, he signed a copy and asked them to pass it on to me via their sales rep - and his partner Claire...who is the basis for Helen Remington in 'Crash' came into my bookshop at the location of this video to take me to lunch at JG's request, but I was away on holiday- I was of course gutted).
I read my first Ballard novel because of you, and I'll read many more! Incredible writer. Wonderful video, as always!
Yes, there was no-one like Jimmy B!
My first Ballard was The Drought with that beautiful green Flamingo 60s cover.
I think one reads Ballard more for the intensity of the images and the beauty of the writing, rather than for plot or characters, which is why he is so different from most fiction and most SF. I find his books very sensuous and immersive, but at the same time psychologically very strange and alienating - a reading experience unlike anything else.
Did you see that the theme for this year's Met Gala - the annual display of extreme wealth in New York - was the 1962 Ballard short story The Garden of Time? A truly bizarre decision: the story is about a wealthy aristocratic couple who pluck flowers from their magical time garden in order to delay the approach of an angry and impoverished mob which eventually overwhelms their castle.
Yes, the Met Gala thing was widely commented upon by Ballardians. And you're correct, the imagery is key. One 'understands' Ballard indirectly, subsconsciously, I think , which is very Freudian and consequently explains the links to Surrealism.
I picked up that Penguin copy of The Wind from Nowhere yesterday (the inverted tank cover) here in France, having read again The Drowned World a few weeks ago. I used The Crystal World in an undergrad paper many years ago, comparing and contrasting a Disch and an Aldiss (can't remember which, now!). And while doing an M.A. in Modern English Literature I introduced my cohort to Crash, not all of whom were impressed (too graphic for many of them). So yes, Ballard has been an undercurrent for me for most of my adult life! I had nearly all of the books at one time but am now having to rebuild the collection ...
I'm finding I've fallen into the 'multiple editions zone' with Ballard, which is absurd given that I have signed firsts of almost everything...but he's a writer you can never have too much of!
Note the focus on properties, landscapes, imagery...complementing the topic.
Thanks!
I read everything I could find in the local library in 82. Blown away man😮
Genius.
Another cool as ice video, Steve. 👌 Cannot wait for your WS Burroughs vid. (You know you want to).
There is already one on the channel, from the early days, one of my most watched clips- it's about why you should read 'Junky' before tackling 'Naked Lunch'. Review the videos by 'most popular' and you'll find it. I must do more on WSB really, as I love his stuff so much....
Terrific video Steve....I came to Ballard through his short stories when I found them in various collections and then fell completely under his spell when working in London in the 80's and 90's which coincided with many of the novels being republished. Although far from his best work, I always point the uninitiated towards Hello America as it reads like a conventional adventure but with just enough Ballardian strangeness to make you want to seek out more. It also has some particularly startling imagery as the expedition arrives in an abandoned New York.
Thanks. Yes, 'Hello America' is an odd one, one of his transitional novels- the recurrence of the postapocalyptic motif but with a Baudrillardian look at the USA...it seems to prefigure 'The Day of Creation' too, I'd say. Ballard's imagery is always stunning, right.
I read my first Ballard books - The Drowned World, Kingdom Come, Crash, Concrete Island, and High Rise - just two years ago thanks to you, Steve. I enjoyed them all. Absolutely loved this little 'introduction'. Beautifully filmed (in a concrete and steel kind of way), thoughtfully edited, and - as with so many of your videos - totally inspiring.
Cheers Clive- this was a fun shoot.
Great video. Some screen caps could be Ballard covers. Just did a reread of The Killing Ground a few days ago in a collection I'm reading. A bleak satire of the Viet Nam' War.
Re-reading 'The Terminal Beach' today...
Having grown up on a skyrise housing estate and playing under the Westway as a kid, I devoured these books before I hit secondary school.
Natural habitat stuff, right?
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I guess being a troubled teen, running away from home and being completely smitten with graffiti, the places inbetween, the concrete stantions and man made caves these structures offered were secret playgrounds and havens in a way. When I illegally painted them they gave me a freedom as much as they symbolised ennui and a type of brutalist facist hopelessness. I love Ballard. Thank you to him and to you for keeping it all alive.
Excellent video essay.
Cheers. Like the PKD reference in your handle.
always love the Ballard Penguin set's artwork. fun video and it's aesthetic
Yes, but very uncommon in the Pelham slipcase!
Excellent video. Subscribed.
Ballard is one of the true greats. I especially appreciate his short stories.
Thank you. Yes, his shorts are excellent. Do watch the backlist there are other Ballard videos here, more to come and lots of other New Wave SF content.
Fantastic💥 Love this format, great to see an SF/-video with original complimentary images instead of the reviewer/channel owner talking. Great material, would love to see more of this format now and then! Best/Felix
Thanks Felix - I love shooting outdoors as you know from my many walking/travel videos on the channel in which I often mention SF. The big problem is finding suitable locations that conjure up the right imagery that are also lacking hordes of people milling around- so when I can make this work, I will do more like this.
Great video Steve, very interesting! I appreciated the tour of the University and it all seemed so familiar....but then it really wasn't familiar with all the new builds! I kept wondering what is now where the old shop used to be!
Hey Simon, glad to hear you enjoyed this- those were great days we shared back then and viewers of this channel have you to thank for getting me back into SF when my interest had waned for some time. The building the shop was in is still there, largely unchanged- but the rest of the campus has been built over so much, it is like a Ballardian space as you see...
Excellent video touching on some of the concepts of our last conversation! Thanks, Steve
Personally makes me all the more excited to see how Vandermeer takes up the ecological disaster legacy in the fourth and final Southern Reach book.
Yes!! Definitely some fantastic camera work and editing here. Commentary is great as always - and I think the audio is better than usual? Sounds better to my ear at least.
I also love the juxtaposition of the cinematography with the commentary. Somehow each enriches the other in an understated way, more so than usual. Perhaps because of the focus on landscape and architecture in Ballard himself (I sadly haven't read him, but from your commentary, that is my impression).
Thanks Jozef, good to hear from you as ever. Yes, I used a different mic, but I hate doing voiceovers, though I must say I was pleased with the results. I usually prefer to speak on location, but you don't always get the best results that way. It is often hard to find suitable locations for outdoor SF shoots, but as I come across them, I shoot them- if you look ay my first Keith Roberts video- where I visit the places some of his books are set at, that's a good example.
The urban environment is key in Ballard's works, especially from the 1970s onward.
This was Brilliant Steve.Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it, mate and good to see you commenting here, much appreciated.
Brilliant video, great filming top notch stuff love a bit of Ballard ! class mate 🫡
Thanks ace.
what an excellent video! this is (some of) what i want from the outlaw bookseller ;)
Tack!
Tack in return. Thanks for supporting the channel as always!
Very well-conceived episode, OB. You've given us a very insightful explanation of what Ballard is all about. And the concrete, metal and glass of the structures you wandered around was a fine touch. As always, your commentary is top shelf, and it was yet another great experience for me here on the Outlaw Bookseller channel. :) Cheers!
Very kind as ever, Rick.
Interesting how you were able to evoke Ballard in some of these sites. Definitely Ballardian. At 2;01, even the outbuilding/service shed made me think of the array of outbuildings in "The Terminal Beach"; just one example. I'm so in awe of Ballard, I really can't come up with any to say other than "SF" doesn't even come to encapsulating his work. He really does break through into another reality, the one that informs this one. As much as I love PKD, I think what makes Ballard so amazing is his ability to take in all that raw power of the unconscious without being overwhelmed by it, and without needing drugs. His sanity--his ability to hang onto it--when deep-sea diving into the unconscious, is what makes him so formidable. He's the guy you want to be in the foxhole with, not PKD. Just my opinion. Thanks, Outlaw, for the wonderful video.
This video is shot on the campus of the University of Bath. I, and the Outlaw Bookseller, spent many happy years there!
@@timcoombs2780 Maybe you could answer this question for me. Do you know if some of this architecture would be considered brutalism? And is that grassed-over amphitheater?
It most certainly is an amphitheatre! A nice place to sit and eat lunch on a sunny day as long as you don’t mind being mugged by ducks! The main university buildings were built in the 1960s and so have a certain brutalistic aspect to them. It’s only seeing them like this that I realised just how ugly they are! I guess I just took them for granted when I was there!
@@timcoombs2780 Thank you very much for answering my questions. Much appreciated.
Yes. Much as I love PKD, I'd prefer to be holed up with JGB- he was a nice guy in person too and a warm correspondent.
Anyone looking for slightly obscure filmed Ballard could do worse than BBC4's Home with a compelling central performance from the late, great Anthony Sher . Last aired in 2009 apparently...
Yes, it was very good- based on his story "The Enormous Space". I have it somewhere here on VHS....
I enjoy all your videos but this one was particularly beautiful.
Many thanks! ST is the lifeblood of this channel, I'm v grateful. I love shooting outdoors, but of course it's often hard to find locations that suit the material, especially for SF!
I've been enjoying your videos for a long time now but have never got round to actually telling you how much I appreciate them (you introduced me to the really rather wonderful Christopher Priest and M. John Harrison, among many, many others), so where better to do this under a video about my favourite author? I'd be interested on hearing your thoughts (either here, or maybe, if you have the time and inclination, in a separate video...?) about that in-between-y, rarely-talked-about period of Ballard's work covering The Day of Creation, Running Wild, The Kindness of Women and Rushing to Paradise. Anyway, superb video as always! 🙂
All of that will be covered in time, watch this space. Thanks for your kind comments.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Looking forward to coverage of this period sometime. Many thanks!
Great video Dad!
Thanks my good man! Your channel support contribution is most welcome!
Ballard 🙌
A stylistic departure for you, but excellent work nonetheless. Strangely, you've taken a distinctly 'Moidian' turn with this vid, although not your intention.
Visually you allow us to wander Ballardian mindscapes.
Canonical.
While I'm alarmed at the notion of being 'Moidian' (as you say far from my intention - I mention 'The Blazing World' as an aside months ago, having read it decades ago, he does a whole video about it) I'm glad you enjoyed it. I very, very rarely do voiceover videos- I absolutely hate doing them, I'd rather free-form, I find the tech for voiceover ungainly. I think I've an established tradition of shooting outdoors- I did my first outdoor SF reviews (Cordwainer Smith) before even Matt of Bookpilled started doing them- and like Matt, I love filming in beautiful places. But this location needed a voiceover, as I shot the footage a couple of months ago.
It's actually a University campus where I once mamaged the bookshop for a total of ten years, an experience that was my most profitable and enjoyable in all my years in managing shops. I've now gone fifteen years in the trade without managing and I miss it hugely.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Don't be alarmed. It's not a dig at either of you, just an observation - perhaps platform shapes performance? App is Destiny?
@@waltera13 You're getting very deep there old chum! LOL
@@outlawbookselleroriginal 😂🤣
Thanks!
Many, many thanks Victor- ST makes all the diff here, as you know!!!!
looks like publisher "Fourth Estate" has a new paperback edition coming out in August (for Canada anyways).
not sure the mechanics of "buy links" for your channel but you should be getting paid for driving traffic their way :)
There are no 'buy links'. In theory I should add some, but I found it impossible to actually do this with Amazon due to the entirely non-intuitive nature of their system.
Good video. Spot on about the appeal of post apocalyptic! I really enjoyed The Drowned Earth the other year when I read it last!
There is a brilliant short story by Charles Platt entitled "The Disaster Story" which is basically a list of the cliches and common elements of the post-catastrophe tale - it's entirely satisfactory in itself and also works as a bit of pre-Ballardian disaster fiction criticism.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thank ye! I might add that to the Loooong list of books/stories to look for. I have to say though, that after reading Garbage World this year, Platt is one author I would only return to by direct recommendation.
@@OmnivorousReader In that case, it may well be that New Wave SF (including Ballard) is not for you- but having said that, 'Garbage World' is not Platt at his best-I'd give that accolade to 'The City Dwellers'.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I have heard that about City Dwellers before, I am on the lookout for it. I quite like Ballard, I found The Drowned World pretty fascinating and swampy. I remember really liking Ballard when I was younger but Garbage World was my first Platt. I might just not have been prepared - it was certainly memorable and I might re-read it sometime just to see. New Wave? Some I like, some less so; Zelazny I adore, Sturgeon and Damon Knight, Delany and Ellison I am pretty enthusiastic about. Le Guin I enjoy... Could go on... will certainly go on reading 'em...
@@OmnivorousReader Well, you're mostly talking about US New Wave there, the canon of which is drawn from Ellison's 'Dangerous Visions'. Sturgeon and Knight obviously predate the 1960s. British New Wave is more definitive, being firmly based on Modernism in terms of difficulty of style and less on taboo breaking, though this is an element. Because of their presence in London in the late 1960s, Delany, Spinrad, Disch, Saldek and Sallis (all of whom were published in 'New Worlds' magazine) are more definitively New Wave than say Zelazny, Ellison or LeGuin, though they played their parts. All great stuff from my perspective.
Great filming
Thanks Jane!
It’s weird seeing the University so empty! Such an ugly series of buildings in a sucht a pretty landscape!
Yes, they've overbuilt on all the beautiful green spaces that used to be there- we were reviewing this back on the plasma just now and Pat- who as you know worked up there for years- said how ugly many of the new builds are.
A very good video
Cheers!
I've just read the wind from nowhere and the drowned world. I'd like to read in order. Should i move on to terminal beach or the drought? I also have the four dimensional nightmare/ the voices of time would that fit into the tetralogy or should i come back to it later? thanks
Well, if you wanted to read Ballard's work in order of publication, you'd go with short stories first: in fact, 'Vermilion Sands' (which conflates all the stories in the eponymous sequence, set in a place that is half mediterranean resort, half southern US desert) is arguably a novel in the way Bradbury's 'The Martian Chonicles' is (i.e. acolelction of stories in the same setting). The early collections of stories differ in content depending on if you have US or UK editions. A good idea is to go with the earliest collections - originally entitled 'The Four Dimensional Nightmare' and 'The Overloaded Man' and use isfdb as a bibliographic reference to content.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal thanks for the response am i correct in assuming the complete short stories collection has everything I would need not including the novels?
@@sw4glyfe Pretty much. They're in chronological order, but I personally find reading shorter collections more enjoyable and contextually better for focusing on an author at a specific point in time.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Awesome, thank you. Any recommendations for shorter collections? I have the terminal beach, the overloaded man and myths of the near future already.
He also said in the 90s that the Feminists and the Islamists would form an alliance.
(a) He was right.
(b) it's not boring right now is it? He would have loved the everyday lunacy we see now.
Yes, he would have found a LOT to write about!
His last few books (from ‘Cocaine Nights’ onwards) were really hitting the mark with comments about contemporary culture, it would be very interesting indeed to see what he could conjure up!