The Complete Short Stories by J G Ballard (2014)

The Complete Short Stories

Written by: J G Ballard

Read by: Ric Jerrom, William Gaminara, Sean Barrett, William Hope, Jeff Harding

Audible Studios - 2014

Audible / digital download

   

I've been reading J G Ballard novels for several decades now and for the most part thoroughly enjoyed them.  Drowned World (1962) and High Rise (1975) probably rank as my favorites and along with Concrete Island (1974) feel like places I actually visited rather than just read about. The Drought (1965) and The Crystal World (1966)  feel like variations on a theme and Running Wild (1988) always feels a little unBallardian, although enjoyable none the less.  Perhaps somewhat controversially Crash (1973) leaves me cold but not because of its themes but rather that it didn't live up to what I imagined it would be.  I probably should revisit it one day and judge it for what it is.  All the other novels are still pending and fortunately he remains one of those authors who still draws me. Constantly creating landscapes and stories I can relate to so I will invariably get round to them all in time.

   Odd then perhaps, that despite how I feel about his work, that I've spent so long just not getting round to reading his short stories.  Especially as they have always been highly recommended by friends.  The glib answers have always been either: Yes, I will one day,  or: So many books, so little time, but actually I think that subconsciously I've always been skeptical that the magic in a Ballard novel would still work in the shorter form or that the size and amount of ideas, would translate across less pages.

   I was wrong.

   J G Ballard's The Complete Short Stories was a monthly credit purchase on audible so an absolute fail on my part as I've been listening to so much great free stuff that my credits had built up to a stupid level and I thought I should probably get round to using some of them up.  I was looking at Ian McEwan, Iain Banks and Ballard, as audible readings would be a new way to enjoy revisiting some of my favorite novels. Then I saw this absolute whopper and knew I had no excuse for not investigating.  Containing 98 stories and totaling sixty three and a half hours of listening time for only one credit must count as the sale of the century.  God only knows what my backlog of credits will be after this little lot.

    Because the timeline to completion is quite long and old age can be a killer, I thought I would write my first review after the first 10 stories.  Just a small appetizer on which to hang an initial thought or two. Those first 10 stories in the collection are "Prima Belladonna", "Escapement", "The Concentration City", "Venus Smiles", "Manhole 69", "Track 12", "The Waiting Grounds", "Now: Zero", "The Sound-Sweep" and "Zone of Terror"

   My first thought was that the running order is not reflective of publication history but a bit of research suggests I was wrong.  This is based on the fact that he had me at the very first one.  Where as at least two of the following stories translate as much simpler revenge with technology tales and lack the subtle sophistication and kaleidoscope of wild ideas that world build a location like Vermilion Sands as featured in "Prima Belladonna"  And then again in "Venus Smiles".  If I could I would move there tomorrow, a fictional holiday resort that feels both strange and familiar, both new and worn out.  I've visited twice so far and have only another 7 stories set within the same location but I feel sure these will be the personal highlights of the collection for me.  That's not to say that other stories aren't sophisticated and wonderfully structured as well.  All 10 tales so far have been entertaining. Some have also been wonderful and some are of such unique vision that it was almost inevitable that they would one day make an adjective out of the authorial voice.

Ballardian - resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in the works of J. G. Ballard, esp dystopian modernity, bleak artificial landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social, or environmental developments

Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers

   The collection is already highly recommended and I'm going to be dipping in and out of it through the coming months, confident that its only going to get even better as we move through the decades.  In a way I'm glad I put off reading Ballard's short stories until now.  It means all the pleasure is ahead.

Steve

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan (2019)

The Cockroach

Ian McEwan

Publisher - Jonathan Cape - 2019

Paperback - £7.99 (or 50p from a charity shop)

   Something a little different and unexpected and not least because I only found it in a charity shop midday on Saturday and had read it by close of play on Sunday evening.  For a bit of background; I like McEwan.  He's probably one of our finest and most interesting writers and he's one of the few modern authors I can think of who is as likely to get a novella published as a novel.  The Cement Garden (1978) is probably one of my favorite books and has a very strange ability to trap time and slow it down within its pages.  Something that I have only experienced elsewhere within the pages of J G Ballard novels. An author I mention here because I'm currently working through his collected short stories and I think I discovered both authors at about the same time so my brain connects them.

   I was aware of The Cockroach and it was always on the list of potential reads.  I also guessed it was a take on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.  But its so much more than just that. At only 100 pages, its too slender a volume for me to be giving away its secrets but its deeply satirical like a Jonathan Swift, absurdest like a Spike Milligan and very very political.  And for what its worth it seems as rational an explanation as to the fate of modern Britain as anything else I've heard recently.  In fact it might be quite hard to see certain politicians on the news from now on and not sit there knowingly nodding.

Steve

The Windvale Sprites by Mackenzie Crook (2011)

 

The Windvale Sprites

Mackenzie Crook

Publisher - Faber and Faber - 2011

Paperback - £6.99

   That bloke from The Detectorists has written a children's book.  Who knew!  Well, I didn't not until I read a review for it in the first Issue of Waiting for You: A Detectorists Zine back in 2021, and even by then, the book was almost 10 years old.

   When a storm sweeps through the country, Asa Brown wakes up the next day to find that his town is almost unrecognisable - trees have fallen down, roofs have collapsed and debris lies everywhere. But amongst the debris in his back garden Asa makes an astounding discovery - the body of a small winged creature. A creature that looks very like a fairy.

   So whats it like?  It's pretty good actually, charming, old fashioned, gently humorous, warm and affectionate.  All the words you might use to describe The Detectorists or Crook's excellent take on Worzel Gummidge.  On top of that it's absolutely stuffed with illustrations, which turns out to be something else that Crook is very good at as they too are by him.  Have we declared him a national treasure yet? If not then why not. He's clearly a very talented chap, but more than that he's a man of artistic integrity who sets a high quality bar for himself that I don't think he has yet failed to surpass.

   The Windvale Sprites as been a lovely distracting read from my usual darker fair although it occurs to me now its finished, that its roots are as much in landscape, history and the arcane as M R James or certain Doctor Who stories that have called to me recently.

   There's prequel to The Windvale Sprites, called: The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth, which I'll get round to later in the year.

   And now there are four Waiting for You: A Detectorists Zine published by Temporal Boundary Press, which I heartily recommend along with their other publications, which are bound to get further mentions in futures blog posts.  To go shopping, follow the link here;  https://temporalboundary.bigcartel.com/products

   What's left to add, other than I think The Windvale Sprites would make a cracking TV adaption but in case that never happens, I'll take some more Worzel Gummidge please Mr Crook, sir.

Steve

Hauntology: Ghosts of Futures Past by Merlin Coverley (2020)

Hauntology: Ghosts of Futures Past

Written by: Merlin Coverley

Read by: Alan Turton

Oldcastle Books - 2020

Audible / digital download

   So I thought I would read something a little different between all the M R James, the YA fiction and the Doctor Who.  On top of that I was following a bit of a synchronicity bylane that started on a trip to central London, heading to The Barbican Centre, and that somehow dropped me off in a second hand bookstore in Bloomsbury and putting my hand on Merlin Coverley's Psychogeography book.  There were another couple of bends in the road that lead me to Coverley's other book on Hauntology, and on audible, but this is where I found myself a couple of weeks back.  Sometimes you just have to go with it and land where you land.

   Hauntology: Ghosts of Futures Past is not my first book on hauntology but its one of those subjects that benefits from multiple explanations and from a variety of sources. It's also a slightly shifting term that will not, and probably should not, be definitively defined.  And because of that it tends to be explained through examples rather than as an absolute.  Different authors, different evidence and reasoning.  What was interesting and made me smile about reading this though, was the reference to M R James as an early contributor to what would become the hauntological cannon.  It posed that while James' stories were classic examples of the Victorian ghost story, the specters at the heart of most of them were uncanny and other-timely, perhaps even abstract, not so much the ghosts of the dead but agents of a past time encroaching into what was then the modern world.

   I think I'm a step nearer to understanding why M R James now feels more important and significant to me in recent years.  And it also explains why what should be an old fashioned set of ghost stories actually translates through modernisation so very well.

   Another name that gets mentioned a lot in the book is that of Mark Fisher and its reminded me that I'm long overdue rereading his Ghosts of My Life and The Weird and the Eerie.  Fisher's words and works had a significant impact on my thinking and understanding of "things cultural" and it would be interesting to check in on those ideas again and see what I get out of them on a second pass.

   I think that perhaps, given the subjects of his books, I thought Merlin Coverley might turn out to be a new guiding light but although I will probably read more of his work, this felt more like an appraisal of other peoples ideas than any fresh thinking on the subjects themselves.  I didn't leave with a reading list of new names to track down or the need to recommend this to anyone else with any great enthusiasm. Its not a bad book but go read Mark Fisher first.

   What else to say about the book.  Well, I went through it pretty quickly because I find the subject fascinating but had I have been reading it in actual book form I might not have read it as fast or even finished it due to its very dry academic style. As an audio its much easier to ignore that because I'm probably washing up or ironing or doing some other physical activity at the same time that makes that less wearing.  Unfortunately, as an audio I also almost didn't finish it but because the narrator is bloody awful and should have been directed to drop the 'Allo Allo' level of accents employed when quoting other folk and the excruciating way of saying; "DA-ReeeDA" when all he actually needed to do was say Derrida as though it were just a normal name.  As the first person to employ the term; Hauntology, Derrida pops up quite a lot and the temptation to throw my phone across the room on every corrupted utterance was sorely tempting.

"I hear you Clem Fandango"

Steve

The Planet of the Daleks (1973) and the dark art of making an impression

   Trawling back through my childhood memories, it's hard to be sure exactly which Doctor Who story was the first one I really remember watching on first broadcast.  I have a very strong mental and emotional image of the Sea Devils rising from the waves and also of a Dalek emerging from an old darkened train tunnel but I can't be sure, based on those two single moments, that they are actually from watching The Sea Devils (1972) or The Day of the Daleks (1972) respectively or just as likely, from one of the many Blue Peter episodes to feature clips from the show's rich history.  What muddies the waters even more is that in the intervening years, I have watched all of the remaining old stories any number of times on Video, DVD and even, on occasion, as a novelty TV repeat. Something that just didn't really happen back in the day.

   However, when you get to the 1973 story; The Planet of the Daleks, I have a good dozen or so moments which stick indelibly in the mind and that still, when pondered, vibrate with the same emotional thrill as first felt when I was 5.

   Killer jungle plants, crashed spaceships, invisible Spiridons and an invisible Dalek being slowly revealed.  The Doctor sneaking between hundreds of slumbering Daleks as they begin to wake, claustrophobic ice-caves filling with water and brave Thal commandos being killed in action.  Daring escapes up lift shafts with Daleks in hot pursuit, Daleks being drowned in smokey waters and their gory insides scooped out into the light of day.  And even if you didn't actually see it, you still saw in your mind's eye. It was a fever dream of wonderful dark treats to a 5 year old who never once hid behind the sofa or even held up a cushion.  I was there, eyes wide and fully engaged in the moment while the fish fingers went cold on the plate on my lap.  The show was a Saturday teatime ritual with siblings and my mum all sitting down to watch together, at least for a few years.

   After a while my sister found it silly,  my older brother found football and my younger brother was too young to care.  I kept turning up.

   I'm not sure why Doctor Who spoke to me quite so personally back than and more importantly why I adored the threat of danger, the monsters and the horror and death of it all.  It seems very young to be so enthralled by all of that dark stuff and yet I was and carried on being.

   At this point in 1973, The Planet of the Daleks was just a series of set pieces to me, perils stacked upon perils, fragments of a larger story I didn't fully follow but which I fully understood emotionally; the danger and the heroism.  It was more than enough and it carved a space for its self in my young mind.

  Some years later I read this;

   The novelisation of the story by Terrance Dicks, must have one of the finest covers in the whole range, with its vivid palette and illustrative special effect death ray.  The threat of imminent extermination for the heroes is still right there on that cover. An emotional trigger back into the story.  It was first published by Target in 1976 with Chris Achilleos providing the art.  I don't think I added it to my collection until around 1979 but when I did it became a prize to be treasured, read and gazed upon at length.

   Around about a year later in 1980, I was gifted a copy of this;

   The St Michael's Doctor Who and the Daleks Omnibus was originally published in 1976.  I can't remember the name of the girl who gave it to me at school one day.  Her brother had been having a clear out and she had remembered from a previous year's 'show and tell'  class, that I liked the series.  I hadn't been aware of the book before then but even as a second hand copy, a little worn and torn around the dust jacket, it was still a wonderful thing to possess and I hope I was suitably  appreciative and grateful.  Its a glorious thing full of illustrations and photos, Dalek histories and Dalek stories. One of the stories was of course; The Planet of the Daleks, and of all the illustrations that went with it, I think I find this one the most striking;

   And not least because it triggered the memory of dread emotion from some 7 years previous when we thrilled at what was inside a dead Dalek.  And even if we didn't quite get to see it again, its still plainly horrific.

 

   Ogling a good piece of artwork was what used to keep us going while we waited for the future to bring us affordable home videos and DVDs.  And now that it has, and a library of all the available stories is only an arms reach away, it would be a terrible shame if we then forgot the magic of those earlier medium or the thrill of that first watch.

 

Steve