J.G. Ballard has been publishing his
extraordinary fiction for over twenty years, in which time he has
established a reputation without peer—as perhaps the foremost writer
since George Orwell to project the consequences of twentieth-century
technology into a post-atomic near future, a blasted landscape where
man's survival is the central question. And it has been his short
stories, so many now regarded as classics outside as well as within the
science fiction world, that have been at the core of his influence and
standing.
In such unforgettable tales as "The Voices of Time," "The Terminal
Beach," "The Drowned Giant," "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D," and "The
Garden of Time," he has created truly poetic images of an apocalypse
all too foreseeable. While these and most all his other stories have
been represented in scores of anthologies, they have never been brought
together in one collection spanning all of Ballard's career. Here,
then, is the cream of his short fiction, nineteen stories selected by
Ballard himself as the best and most broadly representative of his
work. It is a stunning collection, a book that must be considered
mandatory for Ballard fans as well as the ideal introduction to his
work for new readers.
Contents:
- Introduction by Anthony Burgess
- The Concentration City
- Manhole 69
- Chronopolis
- The Voices of Time
- Deep End
- The Overloaded Man
- Billennium
- The Garden of Time
- Thirteen for Centaurus
- The Subliminal Man
- The Cage of Sand
- End Game
- The Drowned Giant
- The Terminal Beach
- The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D
- The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
- The Atrocity Exhibition
- Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy
- Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan
