James G Ballard dies

It had not escaped my notice that JG Ballard had died recently, aged 78.

Yet when I was young, reading all sorts of science fiction, it did escape my notice what was different about Ballard. This was because what I read of his fitted into the general pantheon, so he was absorbed along with the rest. It takes a lot of reading, for example, to identify Ray Bradbury's particular lyricism, Clifford D Simak's wry humour, Philip K Dick's (very instructive) paranoia, Robert Heinlein's right-wing libertarianism - or even AE Van Vogt's Scientology sympathies.

First, Ballard was British, where not many regular names were. Although science fiction is ostensibly - and should be - a universal language, in practice the writers are informed by their cultural background. Do I detect a certain reserve in Brian Aldiss' characters? A less gung-ho attitude to the stars in Clarke's?

The overwhelming echo for me in Ballard's work is the image of a lone, alienated figure (often an airman), wandering across a desolate landscape. Not always the desolation of a nuclear war: the environments were so different across his works, but the barrenness - physical or metaphorical - seemed a constant. Others characterise his oeuvre as an exploration of disturbing distopias.

Of course, Ballard by now is best known for his works that were translated to film: Empire Of The Sun, semi-autobiography set in Japanese-occupied China, and Crash, a Cronenberg film wherein the protagonists have an erotic fixation with car crashes. That latter story is taken from his collection Atrocity Exhibition, whose title was borrowed for a harrowing Joy Division song (on Closer).

And what does it say of environment in the imagination of an author, that he lived over 50 years of his life in the same suburban house?

Some said he was a quirky writer, but that should be no more than a decent science fiction writer gets anyway. Yet he was certainly more literary - and metaphoric - than many writers in what I consider the golden age of SF, the 1950s and 60s. That was still the era when raw ideas trumped writing quality. But not for all; some meshed both.

The Unteleported Man vs Lies Inc

Catalogues of Philip K Dick's output (particularly publisher versions) variously list two novels dating from the 1960s: The Unteleported Man and Lies Inc. They are effectively the same work.

The tortuous publishing history, when boiled down, relates to an extra section that Dick added to The Unteleported Man to make it Lies Inc. That later section adds little to nothing to the plot. Rather, it's a characteristically Dickian exposition on perceptions of reality.

The extra 30,000 words is a bit like an acid trip (although Dick had never indulged at the time of writing*). That is specifically in keeping with the narrative, as the passage is inserted at a point just after a protagonist is attacked with a weapon that injects LSD.

Thus we find ourselves immersed for some time in a chaotic universe where a number of different worlds are experienced, from Paraworld Blue to Paraworld Silver to The Clock World. It is never clear to the protagonist which construct is the real world; in each, the cast of characters is similar, but their motivation, situation - even outward form - differ. The most enduring image is the alien Mazdast, a tentacled cephalopod that periodically eats some of its own - replenishing - eyeballs for nutrition.

The extra section is a bit of a wade for those seeking specific meaning, or those who are unused to Dick's occasional ramblings. Yet it does give some flavour for his almost flippant habit of flipping the reader into a different reality, to the point where the end result cannot be deduced, but must be chased to exhaustion. This writing suggests that that point of exhaustion may sometimes be down to the writer's stamina, rather than the reader's.

I should make note that the edition I read - Gollancz, 1984 - had some annoying errors at times. Not so much typos, but mis-wordings perhaps emenating from an over-extended brain, and uncorrected by proofreaders - if in fact they existed - who ultimately may have read through Dick with eyes firmly glazed. Missteps range from the glaringly obvious to possibly clumsy excisions ("and" clearly needing to be replaced by "the"), to the egregious use of "light-year" as a measure of time rather than distance - later still, it is used as a proper measure of space; possibly Dick's, but it's rather academic where the error originated.


The plot itself relates to a three- (or four-) way struggle between different power factions, where the antagonistic party is not clear until late in the piece. Time travel and parallel universes are ultimately red herrings, although teleportation is not.


*Perhaps surprisingly, Dick's drugs of choice, particularly during the process of writing, had been amphetamine-related. Which prompts the thought that the philosophical state of mind that permeates almost all his work - that there is something more sinister behind perceived reality - was innate, as opposed to induced.

Timescape (SF2)

Timescapes is a 1980 novel by Gregory Benford, which won the Nebula Award, the major science fiction award voted by writers.

Very interesting in that it presages a number of major zeitgeists of the time it was set - 1998. There's a version of the internet, and major global environmental catastrophe - albeit more serious and immediate than global warming.

Amidst what I would say is a major undercurrent of irritability, it still manages to be rather insightful and intelligent. Much of the setting is based around a university physics department, and is very true and detailed in its portrayal of academic research, politics, politics of research, career and hierarchy. The richness and complexity here is hardly surprising, since Benford was a university professor at the time of writing.

The perspective on mathematical and scientific discovery and philosophy is one that only someone very much steeped in the milieu could muster. He captures the excitement and motivation of a scientist. "People became scientists [or mathematicians] because they liked solving riddles, not because they would win prizes." It brought back a lot of nostalgic feeling for me.

Although the denouement is somewhat abrupt, the richness is in the journey. And the resolution of time travel paradoxes is certainly a less common one, and one that is satisfyingly neat for a scientist.

The book is also particularly prescient in its depiction of global environmental disaster, one that is more abrupt, albeit no less inexorable, than our current situation.

Again, I would like to point out that the accolade of the top science fiction award is not an automatic path to fame and riches. This is yet another novel (along with Philip K Dick's The Man In The High Castle) that doesn't exactly lie in abundance on the shelves of libraries and bookshops. But the award in itself bestows the simple imprimatur that it is worth seeking out, since it was favoured by a jury of peers.

What NEXT, PK Dick? (SF1)

When I was a lot younger, I decided that one of my favourite science fiction themes was the one where “everything is not as it seems”. The neighbour is an alien, there's a tunnel under the world, our world is actually a construct, etc.

Then I realised that Philip K Dick was the master of that sub-genre.

Hand in hand with that, goes PARANOIA. Everyone's out to get you.

Yes, folks, PK Dick was a sadly paranoid person, not usually a high-class writer, and responsible for a body of the most highly imaginative sf ideas. A riffle through his five-volume set of short stories will cement these views. Some of the stories are quite directly about paranoia. Try Shell Game and Null-O (both 1953) for two very different takes on it, which ably demonstrate that he was at it from an early age.

So, funny isn't it, that his is the most fertile science fiction brain that's ever been picked by Hollywood. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? [Bladerunner]; We Can Remember It For You Wholesale [Total Recall]; Paycheck; Second Variety [Screamers]; Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly...
And now, The Golden Man, upcoming as Next.

A strong theme running through much of Hollywood's exploitation of Dick is that they tend to take the germinal idea, and completely rewrite it. Next is no exception. In fact, the original protagonist (who can see the future) was a mutant to be feared, not a Nicholas Cage-type action hero. And so it goes. It's not going to stop me seeing the film; nothing is.

Funny enough, but one of his works that is most overlooked, The Man In The High Castle, is the one that won him the Hugo Award – SF equivalent of an Oscar - in 1963. It's an alternative reality where the Axis powers won the second world war, and for some reason it is quite rare in bookshops and libraries. Worth hunting down.

A man of ideas. Which is, after all, what distinguishes science fiction most strongly.