Today
Inner space · Entropy · The only truly alien planet
J. G. Ballard, 1930–2009
“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass-merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.”
The New Wave in Ballard’s own words
“I think science fiction should turn its back on space, on interstellar travel, extraterrestrial life forms … I’ve often wondered why s-f shows so little of the experimental enthusiasm which has characterized painting, music, and the cinema during the last four or five decades. … I think science fiction must jettison its present narrative form and plots. Most of these are far too explicit to express any subtle interplay of character and theme.”
“The biggest developments of the immediate future will take place, not on the Moon or Mars, but on Earth, and it is inner space, not outer, that needs to be explored. The only truly alien planet is Earth. … I’d like to see s-f becoming more like the sombre half-worlds one glimpses in the paintings of schizophrenics, all in all a complete speculative poetry and fantasy of science. … I firmly believe that only science fiction is fully equipped to become the literature of tomorrow.”
From “Which Way to Inner Space?” (1962).
Ballard on this story
“If I were asked to pick one piece of fiction to represent my entire output of 7 novels and 92 short stories it would be ‘The Voices of Time,’ not because it is the best (I leave that for the reader to judge), but because it contains almost all the themes of my writing — the sense of isolation within the infinite time and space of the universe, the biological fantasies and the attempt to read the complex codes represented by drained swimming pools and abandoned airfields, and above all the determination to break out of a deepening psychological entropy and make some kind of private peace with the unseen powers of the universe.”
Ballard, circa 1972.
The mandala in the drained pool
“Powers looked down at Whitby’s ideogram. … It covered almost the entire floor of the pool and at first glance appeared to represent a huge solar disc, with four radiating diamond-shaped arms, a crude Jungian mandala.” (406)
“Stepping into the inner circle of the mandala … He climbed onto the platform, raised his eyes to the darkened sky, moving through the constellations to the island galaxies beyond them, hearing the thin archaic voices reaching to him across the millennia.” (422)
Reading notes: “The Voices of Time”
- Highly regarded today as a literary novelist as well as an SF master, Ballard’s experimental and purposefully controversial work was initially panned. Famously, the first reader’s report to his UK publisher on the manuscript of what became Crash (1973) read: “This author is beyond psychiatric help. DO NOT PUBLISH!”
- Ballard felt strongly that SF should no longer be about interplanetary travel and alien encounters, but should investigate the mysteries of inner space — human psychology in an era of increasing alienation — and the ongoing strangeness of Earth itself.
- Like Asimov’s “The Last Question,” published only ten years earlier, this story is centrally concerned with the end of all life.
- In contrast to Asimov’s mid-century optimism, Ballard offers no solution. He is far more interested in the psychological effects on people of knowing that entropy — rendered here in de-evolutionary terms — is unavoidable.
- Like many New Wave fictions, the narrative is experimental and fragmented, the style demanding, the tone generally bleak — but there are also poetic, even rhapsodic passages, such as the evolved anemone’s view of the world (420–21).
- Read carefully, the fragments and obscure hints come together over time, suggesting that although entropy may be unavoidable, narrative itself provides a measure of redemption insofar as it can remind us of the beauty of life in the face of inevitable death.
Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970)
For Tuesday
- “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison (BBSF 491)
- “Aye, and Gomorrah” by Samuel R. Delany (BBSF 527)
- “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” by James Tiptree, Jr. (BBSF 608)