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[new] Garcia Marquez v. Borges (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#5)
by JeremyWelsh on Wed Dec 31st, 2003 at 12:15:40 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
(User Info) http://homepage.mac.com/jeremyjwelsh

You also mention J.G. Ballard here, and it's no accident that his name often appears in connection with discussions on new media etc. He always distanced himself from conventional science fiction by maintaining that he was not interested in narratives of intergalactic conquest or in visions of "The Future", but rather in unearthing the hidden aspects of the present and of our inner / psychological state. His 1969 novel "The Atrocity Exhibition" remains a tour de force of millenial imagery and was certainly one of the first works of popular fiction to exploit a form of hypertextuality in its formal structure. The most recent edition, published by Flamingo in 2001, includes excellent footnotes/comments on the original text, by Ballard himself. Many of the narratives he took up later in novels such as Crash, Concrete Island etc. were first aired in The Atrocity Exhibition. It is also interesting to note that Ballard was an early commentator on the phenomenon of gated communities, a hot topic of debate amongst architectural critics and urbanists in recent years. Ballard's novella "Running Wild" from the late eighties - which is also an early example of fiction using email as a narrative device - portrays the gated community as a cooped up cauldron of simmering violence and suppressed desire. His collection of essays, reviews and speculative texts, "A user's guide to the millenium," is also worth checking out. Read a review of Ballard's recent novel Millenium People at Culture Court written by "hyperpoet" Paul A. Green aka QB Saul. For background information on Ballard a good source is the monograph published by Re/Search in 1984.

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