I’ve been podcasted! Many thanks to Steve Aryan for having me on the ever awesome Crash Landing over at Geek Syndicate. Steve and I talked about the five novels I’d want to have with me if I was stranded on an alien planet. Some of the books I chose are SFnal, some are magical, oneContinue reading “Crash Landing with five of my favourite novels”
Category Archives: Ballard
bowie’s in space
It’s been fascinating watching people mourn David Bowie. There’s a sadness there that I suspect comes from more than just the loss of a major creative icon. I think we’re also mourning the loss of the conditions that created and supported that kind of icon. Bowie’s iconic status was a product of certain cultural andContinue reading “bowie’s in space”
Ballardian Video Neuronica
Today this has been hypnotising me, on and off. It’s John Foxx and Karborn’s cut-up movie, a Ballardian dream of the end of a century – and so much more:
William Blake understood as a West London Shopping Mall
On Sunday, I went to the William Blake 1809 exhibition at Tate Britain, reviewed here in The Guardian. It’s absolutely fascinating; it restages his first and only public display of prints and paintings, and sets them in a context which helps explain their abysmal critical reception. I wanted to do a video review of it,Continue reading “William Blake understood as a West London Shopping Mall”
Crash
More from Ballard; a 1971 short film about ‘Crash’, written by JGB and directed by Harley Cokeliss.
J. G. Ballard, 1930-2009
What is there to say? He showed us strange, alien worlds, and then we’d look around and realise that we already lived in them. It was a bleak privilege to be a part of the culture he was dissecting, and thus receive his writing in the most direct, most living way possible. There’s much moreContinue reading “J. G. Ballard, 1930-2009”