"Radek paused, collecting his energies with an effort. 'Tatlin believes that this Hubble Effect, as they call it, is closer to a cancer than anything else - and about as curable - an actual proliferation of the the sub-atomic identity of all matter. It's as if a sequence of displaced but identical images of the same object were being produced by refraction through a prism, but with the element of time replacing the role of light.'"
The Crystal World is the fourth of Ballard's novels, coming after The Wind From Nowhere, The Drowned World, and The Burning World. It falls within his science fiction period, coming before more abstract works and the more historically relevant Empire of the Sun.
In the novel, a process of crystallization is slowly overtaking a patch of African jungle. Many of the characters within the story speculate as to the ultimate cause of this crystallization process, and what this alteration of the physical landscape might portend for their personal struggles. What is certain to all of them is that the process is irreversible.
Comparing this book to both The Wind From Nowhere and The Drowned World, I'd have to say that it's a far inferior product. This is because it doesn't quite work in a dramatic sense, and also because the nonsensical scientific explanations for the crystallization process detract from a sense of verisimilitude that the novel would have otherwise possessed. Most of the events set outside of the crystallization process center around two separate love triangles, in which two men compete for the love of one woman, and two women compete for the love of one man. There is also a theme linking the crystallization process to leprosy, and this theme, which ought to have formed the backbone of the novel, is never explored in satisfactory detail.
Yet the biggest weakness of this book is how it portrays the violent conflicts between various characters. These action scenes are incredibly disjointed, and it's hard to figure out what is going on exactly, or who's doing what to whom. While reading through these passages, I began to reflect on the fact that Ballard was never good with such scenes, and his books are better when he avoids them entirely.
With all of the above said, The Crystal World is far from terrible. If you're working your way through Ballard's bibliography I'd recommend it, though only after you've read his more famous books. As for myself, I'll be on to either The Burning World or The Atrocity Exhibition soon.
"Alternatively, their real needs might emerge later. The more arid and effectless life became in the high-rise, the greater the possibilities it offered. By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. It was precisely in these areas that the most important and most interesting aspects of their lives would take place. Secure within the shell of the high-rise like passengers on board an automatically piloted airliner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they could find. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly 'free' psychopathology."
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I'm a big fan of J.G. Ballard. I would list him among the most influential and talented authors of the last century, and despite the creation of an adjective ("Ballardian") in his honor, I think it's a shame that he isn't more widely read.
1975's High-Rise is the eighth of his novels, coming after earlier efforts like The Wind from Nowhere, and The Drowned World, but before his later, best-known book, 1984's Empire of the Sun. Crash, another novel reviewed here, came out before High-Rise, in 1973.
In High-Rise, modern man - in the guise of physician Robert Laing - finds himself deconstructed within the confines of a high-rise apartment building. Laing is one of three main characters in the book, the other two being Richard Wilder, a filmmaker, and Anthony Royal, the architect who designed the high-rise which they inhabit.
Once the high-rise reaches maximum occupancy, the society within it becomes stratified into three levels relative to the floors they inhabit and the services they enjoy, and after this point they begin a long, slow slide into barbarism. The modern world gives way to something more medieval, the middle ages give way to a world of warring tribes and nomadism, and by the end of the book people are eating each other - all without the authorities having the slightest idea of what's going on.
This is definitely the most sociological novel I've read in some time, and I think Ballard's use of the high-rise as a metaphor for the modern world works very well. My only complaint is that Robert Laing isn't a very interesting character, and the narratives of Wilder and Royal aren't given quite enough time to develop properly. Wilder's ascent of the high-rise is a nice attempt at mythologizing their situation, but it would have worked better if he'd had a little more depth, and if he hadn't been absent from so many of the earlier chapters. Laing could have easily been ignored in favor of the dialectic between Wilder and Royal, and the result would have been a more gripping power struggle between the upper and lower classes.
Still, High-Rise is an excellent book, and far better than the recent movie adaptation. It also shares many themes with Crash, Ballard's exploration of modern technology as applied to human sexuality. Crash, however, is a lot more disturbing. It's also much better.
"The birth of a child had become a comparative rarity, and only one marriage in ten yielded any offspring. As Kerans sometimes reminded himself, the geneaological tree of mankind was systematically pruning itself, apparently moving backwards in time, and a point might ultimately be reached where a second Adam and Eve found themselves alone in a new Eden."
J.G. Ballard was a British writer best known for his books Empire of the Sun and Crash. His earliest fiction, however, falls within the category of science fiction. The Wind From Nowhere was his first published novel, and The Drowned World was his second.
In The Drowned World, solar flares have warmed the globe to the point that the polar ice caps are melting, and the equatorial regions have become uninhabitable. In The Wind From Nowhere, a global cyclone rips across the surface of the Earth, quickly eroding the foundations of human civilization. In both books mankind faces the prospect of its own obsolescence, and in both books one finds the depth of characterization, intellectual weight, and skillful prose that would later make the author famous.
And really, in this time of global warming and weird weather you don't get more prescient than The Wind From Nowhere and The Drowned World. At times it seems as if Ballard was describing the present day. Not only this, but the reasons behind these catastrophes are well thought out, and explored with a thoroughness that few other science fiction writers could have matched.
This said, I think there are really two kinds of "hard science fiction," (or, I'm tempted to say, "deeper science fiction"). There are the books so brilliant that it's hard to understand why they weren't more popular, and there are books so brilliant it's easy to understand why they never found an audience. Thinking back to the time when these two books were first published, it's easy to assign both The Wind From Nowhere and The Drowned World to the second category. Their quality is in no doubt, but it's obvious that they must have gone over the heads of most science fiction fans at the time. Lovers of rocket ships and Martian landscapes wouldn't have had the patience for these books, and this fact is far from surprising.
If you can wade through books like Solaris and The Castaways of Tanagar, you'll love this book. If Heinlein and Le Guin are more your thing, I would recommend looking elsewhere.
"Sergeant Uchida cuffed Jim on the head, bruising both his ears. He cuffed him again, bringing blood from his mouth. At that moment a cloud of smoke billowed through the gates. The Annamese women had lit the stove with the rain-soaked firewood, and the smoke filled the open-air cinema, drifting across the benches as if the screen were ablaze."
"Empire of the Sun" is J.G. Ballard's most famous novel. It describes the ordeals of Jim, a young British boy resident in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. The book begins with a portrayal of China on the eve of the Second World War, and from there follows Jim as the war separates him from his parents.
Compared to "Crash," the only other J.G. Ballard book that I've read, this book is much darker in tone, and the author's personal experiences in an internment camp lend the novel a gravity that "Crash" doesn't have. It is a somber, brooding book about the human will to survive and the short-sighted nature of human kindness.
Steven Spielberg also made a movie about it, but the movie is far more upbeat than the book. This makes sense because Spielberg was making a movie for a much wider audience, whereas Ballard could afford to be both more personal and more selective. I don't grudge Spielberg for watering down this story, because a more faithful adaptation would have been very grim indeed.
Residents of Taiwan and China will find a lot of historical interest in "Empire of the Sun." In writing this book Ballard was reliving many childhood experiences, and his accounts of the Japanese, the British, and the Chinese Kuomintang forces are very compelling. The power struggles outlined in this book continue to shape Asia today, and as far as historical import goes I would rank this book alongside Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China."
All in all I would describe "Empire of the Sun" as a good book, although it is extremely depressing. If you're looking for light reading you'll want to avoid this one at all costs, but if you're looking for something deeper you'll enjoy it.
"Without thinking, I visualized a series of imaginary pictures I might take of her: in various sexual acts, her legs supported by complex sections of machine tools, pulleys and trestles; with her physical education instructor, coaxing this conventional young man into the new parameters of her body, developing a sexual expertise that would be an exact analogue of the other skills created by the multiplying technologies of the twentieth century."
J.G. Ballard was an English novelist who passed away in 2009. He began his writing career as an author of science fiction, and later moved into the "serious literature" category with "Crash," "Empire of the Sun," and other novels. This novel, "Crash," inspired a movie of the same name by director David Cronenberg, and "Empire of the Sun" was given a cinematic treatment by none other than Steven Spielberg.
In "Crash," the author develops a sexual fixation on automobiles following a traffic accident. In so doing he crosses paths with the enigmatic Vaughan, a man attempting to engineer the death of Elizabeth Taylor. All of the characters in this novel are extremely promiscuous, obsessed with sex, and completely amoral.
As transgressive fiction goes, this novel is extremely well written, and never grows dull. It can, however, be a little nauseating at times. The author spares no end of detail with regard to his sexual liaisons, the car crashes he views, and the various bodily fluids they elicit, and "Crash" at times resembles a cross between a medical textbook and and an automobile owner's manual. It's a good book, but reading it requires a strong stomach.
Anyone who enjoyed "American Psycho" or "White Noise" will find a lot to like in this short novel. It says a lot about our relationship with technology, and despite being 41 years old it still feels like it could have been written yesterday.
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