New Releases by J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard’s collected nonfiction from 1962 to 2007, mapping the cultural obsessions, experiences, and insights of one of the most original minds of his generation. J. G. Ballard was a colossal figure in English literature and an imaginative force of the twentieth century. Alongside seminal novels—from the notorious Crash (1973) to the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (1984)—Ballard was a sought-after reviewer and commentator, publishing journalism, memoir, and cultural criticism in a variety of forms. The Selected Nonfiction of J. G. Ballard collects the most significant short nonfiction of Ballard’s fifty-year career, extending the range of the only previous collection of his nonfiction, A User’s Guide to the Millennium (1996), which selected essays and reviews published between 1962 and 1995. A decade on from Ballard’s death in 2009, a new generation of readers needs a new collection. In the period following A User’s Guide, Ballard’s writing addressed 9/11, British politics from New Labour onward, and what he termed “the rise of soft fascism”—a diagnosis that maintains its relevance amid a shift toward right populism in European and US politics. Beautifully edited by Ballard scholar and novelist Mark Blacklock, this volume includes Ballard’s editorials and manifestos; commentaries on his own work; commentaries on the work of others; reviews; and more. Above all, it makes the case for the currency of Ballard’s work at a contemporary juncture at which so many of his diagnoses concerning the media and politics have become apparent.

Yet again J. G. Ballard’s inimitable clairvoyance is on display in this timely, powerful story of a community shattered by a massive act of violence. A massacre rocks a suburban utopia—thirty-two adults murdered, and their children missing—in Running Wild, one of Ballard’s most dazzlingly subversive works of fiction. “To Ballard, lack of choice . . . is a dangerous state of being. In Running Wild, it’s not the children who are doing the running; it is the society that raised them” (San Francisco Chronicle).

"First published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux"--Title page verso.

Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Ã1973.

First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of J. G. Ballard''s best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. This collection includes “The Garden of Time,” the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala–fashion’s biggest night. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily prescient and now provide greater perspective on our computer-dominated culture. Ballard''s voice and vision have long served as a font of inspiration for today''s cyber-punks, the authors and futurists who brought the information age into the mainstream.

In The Kindness of Women, a sequel to his award-winning Empire of the Sun, young James returns to England at the end of World War II. He stumbles through medical study at Cambridge, trains briefly as an RAF pilot in Canada, and marries. When his wife dies suddenly, Jim is thrust into the violence and sexual promiscuity of the sixties. Penetrating and wise, J. G. Ballard''s biting social commentary and pushing of boundaries make this semi-autobiographical novel a small classic.

"This fable lifts a great freight of ideas effortlessly…The story of an expedition driven on by wishes of possession and power but guided internally by myths of America whose sources lie in the late 20th century." —Guardian Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth century, America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the now climatically mutated continent. But America is unrecognizable—the Bering Strait has been dammed and much of the country has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-country journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks, to uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas.

"A remarkable piece of invention, a flight from the world of the familiar and the real into the exotic universe of dream and desire." —New York Times Book Review When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is transformed. Vultures invade rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations toward an apocalyptic climax. In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that has established him as one of the twentieth century’s most visionary writers.

Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists win control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their very own into a much darker place.

The author of such novels as "Empire of the Sun" and "Crash" recalls his childhood, his first attempts at science fiction, and his life as a single father after the premature death of his wife.

A startling and at times unsettlingly prescient collection of J.G. Ballard’s greatest interviews.

From one of the most powerful and original talents in science fiction comes the story of a new world--a strange world where solar radiation fluctuations have melted the polar ice caps, flooding the land and raising the temperature of the atmosphere.

First in a two volume collection of short stories by the acclaimed author of Empire of the Sun, Crash, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.

Class war erupts in a luxurious high-rise apartment building.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Fiction) “J.G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis.... A brilliant novel.” —Literary Review A violent novel filled with insidious twists, Kingdom Come follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richard’s suspicions are aroused. Investigating the mystery, Richard uncovers at the Metro-Centre mall a neo-fascist world whose charismatic spokesperson is whipping up the masses into a state of unsustainable frenzy. Riots frequently terrorize the complex, immigrant communities are attacked by hooligans, and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to suburban mind rot, revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.

"The most cosmically elegiac writer in literature . . . no one reading Ballard could doubt the tidal gravity of his intellect." —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times Book Review Violent rebellion comes to London’s middle classes in this “fascinating” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the same author of Crash and Empire of the Sun. Never more timely, Millennium People “seeks to illuminate our hearts of darkness while undermining our assumptions about what literature is meant to do” (Los Angeles Times).

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard. With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius. Whether writing about musical orchids, human cannibalism, or the secret history of World War III, Ballard''s Complete Stories evokes the hallucinations of Kafka and Borges in its ability to render modern paranoia and fantastical creations on the page. Includes the story "The Garden of Time," the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala Dress code.

This classic text stands as one of the seminal works of Surrealism, revealing the most astonishing and intimate workings of the mind of Salvador Dali, the eccentric polymath genius who became the living embodiment of the 20th''s century most intensely subversive, disturbing and influential art movement. This volume covers his life from 1952 to 1963 and includes a brilliant and revelatory essay on Dali, and the importance of his art to the 20th century, by acclaimed author JG Ballard.

Duos.

Jim, an eleven-year-old British schoolboy living in Shanghai in 1941, must learn to survive on his own when he is separated from his parents and sent to a Japanese prison camp

A highly sought cultural commentator, J. G. Ballard has provided thoughtful remarks on the state of the world for decades. J.G. Ballard Conversations brings together several of Ballard''s latest interviews and gives readers penetrating insight into the mind of one of the freshest thinkers at work today. Covering topics such at the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the evolution of sexual relationships, and our strange, immersive celebrity culture, this book is a fount of provocative takes on the things that matter. Rounded out with rare photographs of Ballard and supplemental resources, J.G. Ballard Conversations is a necessary item for anyone interested in the modern world

A war-ravaged Beirut is the setting for the title story of this visionary collection, a tale in which a young street fighter inadvertently discovers how to bring an to the bloodshed only to find that his solution is all too effective as far as some supposedly neutral observers are concerned. Other stories feature an assassination plot against an American astronaut, the leader of an authoritarian religious movement; a man who is destroyed by a car crash and resolves never to leave his apartment again; and the survivor of a toxic-waste ship wrecked on a deserted Caribbean island.

On the Spanish Riviera, an English discotheque manager is falsely accused of setting fire to a villa which killed its occupants. The man''s brother arrives from England to clear his name and in the process uncovers a drugs and pornography ring.

A collection of novelist''s non-fiction writings spanning more than thirty years addresses topics including the arts, science, literature, popular culture, and his own life.