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The Terminal Beach (1964) is arguably Ballard’s best collection of short fiction, with the title story, The Terminal Beach, frequently credited as initiating the ‘New Wave’ movement that championed the exploration of ‘inner space’ as opposed to the ‘hard sf’ typified by writers such as Heinlein and Asimov. Important ingredients could be drugs, disasters, overpopulation and sex - just some of the themes finding their way into these varied and brilliant stories.
     Take disasters. The apocalyptic The Illuminated Man sees the universe crystallizing from a ‘leakage’ of time - a story subsequently expanded into the classic novel The Crystal World (1966). Deep End offers another post-apocalyptic nightmare. The oceans have died after being harvested ‘to provide oxygen for atmospheres for the new planets’. With no oceans, ‘climatic and other geophysical changes [ensured] the extinction of Earth itself.’ In a final act of brutality, the protagonist witnesses a youth stoning to death the last dogfish on the planet.
     The Drowned Giant further examines our ‘reckless instinct for destruction’. A drowned giant is washed ashore. However, this miraculous treasure is treated as a banal gift from the ocean - the giant’s limbs hacked off, slogans carved into its decaying flesh and a youth, symbolising the lowest echelon of humanity, crawls into ‘one of the nostrils, from which he emitted barking noises like a dog.’
     In The Reptile Enclosure Ballard explores the link between animal instincts and human compulsion. Satellites have triggered off IRMs - Innate Releasing Mechanisms - ‘laid down millions of years ago when other outer space vehicles were encircling the Earth’ causing everyone on a crowded beach to head – lemming-like - into the sea.
     Ballard is a master at capturing atmospheric landscapes - lagoon worlds for instance in The Delta at Sunset, or the Amazon rainforest in A Question of Re-entry - Ballard’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ where we join Lieutenant Connolly - working for the ‘Space Department, Reclamation Division’ - on a mission to locate a lost lunar space capsule.
     In Billennium overpopulation is treated as an ironic comedy. Individuals are allowed ‘only four square metres’ of living space, and human traffic jams are frequent - you can be trapped in one for days.
     These twelve stories justify Ballard’s reputation as a ‘national treasure’. If you have not read Ballard, then start here.
 

(c) Tony Mileman, 2003