Not to take away from his verdict on the 20th century: Ballard’s a bard of techno-anomie, of late-capitalist disaffection, and his writings are just the tonic if your local cloverleaf traffic jam or gated community or global warming harbinger has got you feeling out of sorts. But it’s precisely his grounding in deeper undercurrents of cosmic-existentialist wonder that give that tonic its fizz. His is the voice reminding you not to take the postmodern hangover too personally: it was always going to happen this way.

Jonathan Lethem eulogizes J.G. Ballard in The New York Times Book Review.

Good morning, world.

* Michael Steele wants you to know that Republicans are done apologizing for the ruinous policies of the last eight years. Love it or lump it, chumps, they've turned the page.

* "Calling Utopia a Utopia," by Ursula K. Le Guin.

To define science fiction as a purely commercial category of fiction, inherently trashy, having nothing to do with literature, is a tall order. It involves both denying that any work of science fiction can have literary merit, and maintaining that any book of literary merit that uses the tropes of science fiction (such as Brave New World, or 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale, or most of the works of J.G. Ballard) is not science fiction. This definition-by-negation leads to remarkable mental gymnastics. For instance, one must insist that certain works of dubious literary merit that use familiar science-fictional devices such as alternate history, or wellworn science-fiction plots such as Men-Crossing-the-Continent-After-the Holocaust, and are in every way definable as science fiction, are not science fiction — because their authors are known to be literary authors, and literary authors are incapable by definition of committing science fiction.

Now that takes some fancy thinking.

* And Sarah Conner's showrunner says goodbye.

Good shows are cancelled every year; smart shows, worthy shows, shows which move their viewers to write blogs and have viewing parties and create action figures and bury executives’ email accounts under thousands of messages. I miss Deadwood and The Wire and Arrested Development but thank God that I still have Rescue Me and The Office and a recently renewed Party Down written by ex-T:SCC writer John Enbom.

Bad shows are cancelled, too. And certainly there are those who did not like what we did and had their own vision for what a Terminator TV show should be. It’s easy to look at low ratings or cancellation as “failure” and for those who believe we’ve gone about this all wrong I’m sure today’s news will only serve to confirm a world view that I would never try to change. We’ve written the show as best we can, executed it to the best of our abilities, and sent it out in the world knowing that we worked out asses off to do something that wouldn’t be a waste of anybody’s forty-three minutes.

Mostly non-apocalyptic Sunday links. (UPDATE: Yes, I know it's Saturday.)

* J.G. Ballard's last story, in the Guardian.

* The governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela have issued a statement in response to the 5th Summit of the Americas that declares, in part, that capitalism is destroying the planet. Why do the governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela hate America / Jesus / puppies?

* See also: An anti-environmentalist lobbying coalition for industry has been caught, cigarette-lobby-like, ignoring its own experts.

* See also: this cartoon.



* Myths about the National Popular Vote Bill. This page actually answered a few of my objections, mostly about the likelihood of post-election pact-breakage.

* Crimes committed by Ferris Bueller during his day off.

MFA programs vs. the still-warm body of J.G. Ballard.

Sad news: J.G. Ballard has died.

Oink, oink, baby, in the most Orwellian and neo-Freudian senses.

* At McSweeney's: Saved by the Bell: The Grad School Years.

* The University of Michigan Press is announcing today that it will shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital.

* J.G. Ballard's Alien and Starsky and Hutch.

* Every time a bell rings a volcano erupts, Bobby Jindal doesn't become president.

* Life as a $100,000-a-year clown.

* Life as the world's hottest basketball prospect—in sixth grade.

Science fiction authors that lit geeks think it's cool to read. Surprisingly complete list from io9—off the top of my head it's hard to think of any omissions besides J.G. Ballard and perhaps Kim Stanley Robinson.

You could play the same game in the opposite direction, too: traditionally literary authors that sci-fi geeks think it's cool to read. Orwell, Huxley, Atwood, Kafka, DeLillo, Pynchon, DFW...

The Ballardian watches Day of the Dead.

The mall in both Ballard and Romero becomes a city, a country, a galaxy, a self-sustaining micronational state seceding from reality, a State of mind absorbing and zombifying all it touches, and the faceless, cartoonish football hordes in KC are consumer zombies as much as the walking dead in Romero are metaphorically intended to be.

Yet, if you tweak your perspective just a little, the survivors in both could conversely be read as the oppressors, the old world clinging to its accumulated wealth, hording it for themselves in the face of the zombie attack — an all-devouring, ever-growing underclass.

The 20th Century is characterized by both visionary dreams of amazing scientific advancement (the Space Race; Astrophysics; the Computer Revolution; organ transplant surgery) and nightmares of barbarism (death camp experiments; Hiroshima; Vietnam; serial killings). Clearly, our astounding technological innovation has not been accompanied by “utopian” social progress or a sweeping elevation of individual clarity. The basic underpinnings of society seem flawed: the structural myths, goals, icons, and values; as well as the information processing/analytic capabilities of its citizens. Just as their myth about the coming of a white messiah prepared the Aztecs for an easy takeover and slaughter by a handful of Spanish conquistadores, so our fundamental mythology may be preparing us for what now seems inevitable: the suicide of the planet Earth.

This short paragraph may be the most succinct enunciation of The Problem I've yet seen. It's the first paragraph of Andre Juno & V. Vale's introduction to Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, the first word of which (quite appropriately) is "apocalypse."

"In his mind World War III represents the final self-destruction and imbalance of an asymmetric world, the last suicidal spasm of the dextro-rotatory helix, DNA. The human organism is an atrocity exhibition at which he is an unwilling spectator..." —J.G. Ballard

Epigrams for my dissertation...

Here's Anthony Burgess writing about J. G. Ballard, apocalypse, and the nature of science fiction in his evocative introduction to the 1978 edition of The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard. Naturally I pretty strongly agree with what Burgess has to say both about the importance of science fiction in the culture and about the centrality of the apocalyptic in science fiction—check my dissertation for more on this topic, expected completion date August 2017—and I find it world-historically unfortunate that Ballard's "restless[ness] to try new things" ultimately drove him (mostly) away from s.f.

The 21st century, after all, is already looking a lot like Ballard.

The first thing to say about J. G. Ballard is not that he is among our finest writers of science fiction but that he is among our finest writers of fiction tout court period. Ballard himself might retort that, granted the first claim, the second is redundant, since the only important fiction being produced today is science fiction (or the fiction of the untrammeled imagination, or of hypothesis, or of the metaphysical pushing to the limit of a scientific datum: unsatisfactory as it is, we always end up with science fiction). I understand that the only living writers Ballard really admires are Isaac Asimov and William Burroughs. This can be interpreted negatively as a rejection of the kind of fiction that pretends there has been no revolution in thought and sensibility since, say, 1945. And this, alas, means the greater part of contemporary fiction, which remains thematically and stylistically torpid, limiting itself, as to subject matter, to what can be observed and inferred from observation and, as to language, what might be regarded by George Eliot as a little advanced but, on the whole, perfectly intelligible. Ballard considers that the kind of limitation most contemporary fiction accepts is immortal, a shameful consequence of the rise of the bourgeois novel. Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination. To go forward, as Ballard does, is also to go back—scientific apocalypse and pre-scientific myth meet in the same creative region, where the great bourgeois novelists of tradition would not feel at home.

Ballard is a writer who accepts thematic limitations, but they are his own. His aesthetic instinct tells him that the task of the scientific fiction writer is not primarily to surprise or shock with bizarre inventions but, as with all fiction writers, to present human beings in incredible, if extreme, situations and to imagine their reactions. Ballard's characters are creatures of the earth, not from outer space. Why devise fanciful new planets when we have our own planet, on which strange things are already happening, on which the ultimate strange happening is linked to present actualities or latencies by cause and effect? There is nothing in the evolutionary theory that denies living things that ability to develop leaden carapaces as a protection against nuclear fallout. In time, the demographic explosion will bring about not only fantastic living-space regulations but a habit of mind that sees a broom closet as a desirable residence. Man will suck up oxygen from the oceans to aerate habitats in orbit, the Atlantic will be diminished to a salt pool, and in the pool will be the final fish of the world, to be battered to death by vicious boys. A new kind of man evolves, enslaved by engines of subliminal persuasion to ever-increasing consumption. Our response to Ballard's visions is two-fold: we reject this impossible world; we recognize that it is all too possible. The mediator between that world and this is a credible human being in a classic situation—tragical-stoical: he fights change on our behalf, but cannot win. Faulkner, in "The Overloaded Man," comes closest to victory by devising an epistemological trick—reducing the objects of the detestable world to sense-data, turning the sense-data to ideas, then killing the ideas by killing himself.

It would be too easy to call Ballard a prophet of doom. It is not the fiction writer's job to moralize about Man the Overreacher, in the manner of the old Faust plays. He lays down a premise and pursues a syllogism. If we do this, then that inevitably follows: choice remains free. We associates prophecies of impending damnation, anyway, with the kind of mentality that rejects all technological progress: once admit the acoustic phonograph and the internal combustion engine and you are lost. Both H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley built their utopias (eutopias, dystopis) on unassailable scientific knowledge. Ballard's own authority in various specialist fields seems, to this non-scientist, to be very considerable: I never see evidence of a false step in reasoning or a hypothesis untenable to an athletic enough imagination. The intellectual content of many of the stories is too stimulating for depression and so, one might add, is the unfailing grace and energy of the writing.

In my view, two of the most beautiful stories of the world canon of short fiction are to be found in this selection. They are not, in the strictest sense, science fiction stories: their premises are acceptable only in terms of storytelling as ancient as those of Homer. In "The Drowned Giant" the corpse of a colossus of classic perfection of form is washed up on the beach. Children climb into the ears and nostrils; scientists inspect it; eventually the big commercial scavengers cart it off in fragments. The idea, perhaps, is nothing, but the skill lies in the exactness of the observation and the total credibility of the imagined human response to the presence of a drowned giant. Swift, in Gulliver, evaded too many physical problems, concerned as he was with a politico-satirical intention. Ballard evades nothing except the easy moral: to say that his story means this or that is to diminish it. In "The Garden of Time" a doomed aristocrat, aptly named Axel, plucks crystalline lowers whose magic holds off for a while the advancing hordes that will destroy his castle and the civilized order it symbolizes. In an older kind of fairy story, the magic of the flowers would be potent but unspecified, vaguely apotropaic. In Ballard the flowers drug time into a brief trance—specific, and if one is a little off one's guard, almost rationally acceptable. The rhythms of poignancy which animate both stories are masterly; Ballard is a moving writer.

There are three short pieces at the end of this selection which show Ballard moving in a new direction. His novel Crash evinces a fascination with the erotic aspects of violent death, or the thanatotic elements in Eros. These little sketches, highly original in form as well as content (though Burroughs seems to be somewhere underneath) play grim love-death games with public, or pubic, figures. They will serve as a reminder that Ballard, master of traditional narrative styles, is restless to try new things. Through him only is science fiction likely to make a formal and stylistic breakthrough of the kind achieved by Joyce, for whom Vico's La Scienza Nuova was new science enough. That Ballard is already important literature this selection will leave you in no doubt.

Anthony Burgess
Monaco 1978

J.G. Ballard talks to Joseph Campbell at the Guardian. Here he is on my obsession of the moment, soccer:

Ballard's conversation, like his writing, is regularly punctuated with inventories of the liberating spirit of technology. But with scarcely a twitch to indicate a change of direction, he explains that his most recent novel, Kingdom Come (2006), "posed the question: could consumerism turn into fascism? The underlying psychologies aren't all that far removed from one another. If you go into a huge shopping mall and you're looking down the parade, it's the same theatrical aspect: these disciplined ranks of merchandise, all glittering like fascist uniforms. When you enter a mall, you are taking part in a ceremony of affirmation, which you endorse just by your presence." Consumerism "has to a large extent replaced art and culture in this country. The principal entertainment industry nowadays is soccer which, with its marching supporters' groups, is not that far removed from fascism."

Could consumerism turn into fascism? Shouldn't we be asking if it ever could have not?

The Ballardian has what may be its most purely fun post yet: the news that J.G. Ballard wrote a script ("Gulliver in Space") for a BBC children's show in 1966. It looks like the episode may be lost, but man, I'd love to see it.

The Ballardian is translating German-language interviews with J.G. Ballard. First up: the centrality of the future in science fiction (1968) and the importance of not writing about the future (1976).

Thursday links:

* The North Pacific Trash Vortex, which was the size of Texas in September, is now larger than the entire United States. My horror about what we're doing to the planet has likewise quintupled in size in that time—though I must admit there's something eerily poetic about the idea that our wasteful patterns of consumption are creating a kind of shadow U.S. comprised entirely of garbage. Via Daily Kos.

* Science fiction and space technology, an educational site at NASA. Thanks to Klarr for the pointer.

* ...imagining the future is not an issue of imagination vs. actualization, and neither is it an issue of affirming the future, or "keeping the future alive." Rather, science fiction can configure the future as the conditions of possibility and constraint for social change in the present. A short essay concerning Jameson's Archeologies of the Future at CTheory.net, also via Klarr.

* "Marinaded in war and violence: Philip Dodd interviews J. G. Ballard."

* Top-earning dead celebrities, at Forbes. This year, no one can touch Elvis, not even John Lennon. Via Bitter Laughter.

* Rumors of her demise may be exaggerated: While Obama's supporters have raised $7.5 million dollars since Super Tuesday, Clinton's people have still raised about $4 million (almost enough to cover that loan she gave herself a few days ago). We don't want a repeat of New Hampshire on our hands—she's going to be in this fight for a while. Still, john in the comments notes that Obama's taken the lead in the Rasmussen prediction markets for what we think is the first time, 57-43, bolstering my claim that he is now the strong frontrunner. Can victory for the cult of Obama be far off?

* The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, online.

One of the major questions we've been wrestling with over in the culturemonkey discussion group about futurity is the question of whether people consumer apocalyptic fantasy because they fear it or because they long for it. (And of course there's no easy answer to this question— we recoil in fear from apocalypse because we're afraid it's what we really want, just as the little pessimist inside all of us is eager for the inevitable disaster to just hurry up and get it over with, and so on, spiraling down and down the psychoanalytic rabbit hole. Both/and.) Just to throw fuel on this fire, a pair of Times articles out yesterday and today help shine light on why it is that end-the-world fantasy (Children of Men, Cloverfield, climate-related apocalypse, Life Without People on the Discovery Channel just this week) is such a commercially vibrant field right now:

'Voters Show Darker Mood Than in 2000'

While not universal, that tone pervaded dozens of interviews conducted over the last week with Americans of all political stripes in 8 of the 24 states that hold primaries or caucuses on Feb. 5, as well as with historians, elected officials, political strategists and poll takers. As the candidates fan out to New York and California and here to the heartland, they are confronting an electorate that is deeply unsettled about the United States’ place in the world and its ability to control its own destiny.

and probably quicker to the point in terms of locating the likely origin for this new pessimism:

'Worries That the Good Times Were Mostly a Mirage'

But it’s hard not to believe that the economy will pay a price for the speculative binge of the last two decades, either by going through a tough recession or an extended period of disappointing growth. As is already happening, banks will become less willing to lend money, households will become less willing to spend money they don’t have and investors will become more alert to risk.

Welcome to the new moderation.

I love how mere "moderation" is figured in and of itself as a kind of disaster.

Still, I can't ignore this link from Bldgblog which Ryan left in the culturemonkey comments, which shoots past mere longing for the end of the world to bring us to a very Ballardian understanding of apocalypse as a kind of pornography—and the problems this death drive causes when you're trying to motivate people to change the way they live:

As it is, we're being told that we should worry about climate change... because it resembles one of the most exciting tropical adventures ever to befall the human race.

Who's going to get upset about that?

Needless to say, I think this is an exceptionally good point.

Responding to Clive Thomas's claim last week that science fiction is the last great literature of ideas, Simon Sellars at Ballardian has a nice compilation of similar quotes from Ballard and Gibson.

I firmly believe that science fiction is the true literature of the twentieth century, and probably the last literary form to exist before the death of the written word and the domination of the visual image. S-f has been one of the few forms of modern fiction explicitly concerned with change—social, technological and environmental—and certainly the only fiction to invent society’s myths, dreams and utopias. —Ballard, ‘Hobbits in Space?’ (a review of Star Wars), 1977

Science fiction is the apocalyptic literature of the twentieth century, the authentic language of Auschwitz, Eniwetok, and Aldermaston. —J.G. Ballard, from the blurb to the original 1962 edition of The Drowned World

At the risk of quoting the whole post—there's more over there, trust me—I like what Sellars himself has to say near the end of his post as well:

When in the course of a normal day one can stroll through any number of virtual realities and simulations, engaging in prosthetic inter-personal communications which would have seemed unthinkable even 10 years ago, where’s the point in continuing to try and define the genre? When the future has collapsed into the present so completely, and completely reshaped our view of reality right down to the most banal details of our lives, as it does in the here and now, all I see when I conjure up the term ’science fiction’ is mouldy old episodes of Star Trek and creaky reruns of Flash Gordon.

More on this when I have a little more time to think about it. The culturemonkey crew has been talking about it a lot at our weekly meetings...

This New York Times pan of Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon winds up being a pretty interesting profile of Leo Szilard, the man who came up with the idea for the hypothetical cobalt bomb Kubrick used in Dr. Strangelove. Meanwhile, Posthuman Blues's best of 2007 post has allowed me (and now you) to catch up on a very interesting blog I only just started reading, including (just for example) this YouTube clip on catastrophism in the fiction of J.G. Ballard.

Waste in the fiction of J.G. Ballard.