J.G. Ballard Dies at Age 78 162
jefu writes "J.G. Ballard, an author (of science fiction and other fiction) has died. His works include some of the strangest and most compelling novels ever, including 'The Crystal World,' 'Crash' and 'The Atrocity Exhibition.' For a truly weird read, try his 'Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race," compared with Alfred Jarry's "The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race.'" Here is Ballard's obituary at the BBC.
For those with ebook readers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:5, Funny)
"George Lucas was seen fleeing his California ranch today after visiting an unnamed website."
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Re: let the feast begin! (Score:2)
The Author is dead! Long live the Public Domain!
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Ever heard of Compulsory Purchase Orders ?
You *never* really own the land, there's always the possibiity the Government can buy it out from under you at a paltry minimal valuation.
And then of course there's the Vogons ...
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they should not be nullified upon death. What if the author dies a day after his work is first published? The publisher still has to pay their bills. Copyright should be restored to its original condition as laid down by the founding fathers; 14 years is more than fair in this day and age.
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:5, Insightful)
14 years is excessive, as improved distribution methods mean more people can access the work soon after publication than was possible when copyright was originally designed. Additionally, improved communications technology increases the pace of meme distribution, and as a great deal of value of a copyrighted work is in the novel social interactions it enables this shortens its time of highest value.
An automatic copyright of 5 years, with an extension of another 5 years available on paying a several thousand dollar fee sounds reasonable.
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of us take more than 14 years to finish our creative works. Sorry if your flash animations aren't as hard as painting a building sized mural by yourself or writing a field guide on all known North American bird species. While we can certainly adjust it so that when you're finished is when the clock starts, going from one project to another if it takes more than 5 years to complete is not very economical. I assume for a steady income we'd like to have royalties for at least as long as it takes us to make another project that can produce steady income.
I'd argue 5 years for corporate entities, and 20 years for individuals. With no extensions possible. If you need to protect your work for more than 5 years, you'll have to figure out a way to tie trademarks into it and protect it the hard (and expensive) way.
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Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:4, Insightful)
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Is that due to the bandwidth demands of downloading an entire building, or just a commentary on the quality of his work?
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Is that due to the bandwidth demands of downloading an entire building
Hmmm ... someone's never heard of torrents. :)
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Really? You've never heard of photography?
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You likely can't publish photographs of it without my permission either.
Of course if it's a stupid mural, then what's the point. Wasted time and paint.
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It's call a "copy"right, because it controls your right to copy it. Not your right to view it.
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I am so not going to illegally copy your building sized mural. Promise.
I tried to illegally copy it, but I think they got suspicious of me when they noticed I was building an identical wall as to what the mural was painted on only with wheels and a mere 20ft from it...
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:5, Interesting)
We could have different copyright terms on different creations... entertainment software could be 5 years, serious commercial trade software like CAD/CAM or 3DS Max could be 15. Reference materials like your guide on N.A. bird species could be the life of the author or 25 years for the publisher. Textbooks similar. Movies 10 years. Etc.
Further, copyright doesn't have to be absolute. As in my above example, after 3 years, all entertainment software could go id-style where the engine is pretty much free and mod-able, but the art remains under control for the duration of the 5 years. Another case that comes to mind were the lawsuits over Harry Potter guides. Say Harry Potter's copyright is 12 years, but after 6, all of this control over derivative works goes away.
I'm not really asserting that this is the right way to go or anything, but it seems obvious to me that a lot of these problems are the result of lumping all copyrightable material into one set of rules. Should flash animation be legally the same as a mural in this context? I don't ever see anybody really asking these questions directly.
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My game is commercial entertainment for the serious trade of fragging noobs.
One of the problems with a system that has different rules for different content is that it quickly becomes warped as various groups have more powerful lobbyists than others. Music might start off at 5 years, but then end up being 50 years because those guys are way better at this game than the reference book authors.
It can be a little easier to defend the laws from extensions if they are applied "fairly" from the start. Although fa
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If you make it different terms, especially ones this far apart in length, corporations will just have one of their chief officers register all the companies work as an individual and grant a perpetual license to the corporation to use them.
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And they absolutely can, but a company might find it a little dangerous to grant a CxO or even a board member an easy way to extort the company for 20 years. In many cases it would be easier/safer to just let your competitors get access to it after 5 years.
If you start a new company, you might have few employees, and the founder can be trusted not to extort his own fledgling company. If you have a big company with thousands of employees and public investors, then the decision to go with a copyright controll
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If you make the time too short, then you can actually encourage people to just wait. Even 14 years will likely be short enough for the vultures (ie. large publishers, film studios, the chronically unhip and cheap) to opt out of bothering until the copyright runs out and they can do whatever they want.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
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You realise that when you spend years writing a book based on an entire lifetime's work, after all the struggles of publishing and promoting a book, 5 years seem like a blink of an eye to reap the fruits of your hard work.
You're aware that most book writers are little guys who hardly can even make a living out of it and wouldn't do what they do if it wasn't for the hope that their work could benefit them and their family durably? You realise that few book writers are Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, right? I d
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You're aware that most book writers are little guys who hardly can even make a living out of it and wouldn't do what they do if it wasn't for the hope that their work could benefit them and their family durably?
If they do it for the "hope that their work would benefit them and their family durably", then they are fucking stupid. As you say, most can hardly even make a living out of it. Yet they still do it, and they still did it BEFORE copyright even existed. Even today, people still write to self-publish AT A COST with no hope of even recouping the printing cost.
My contention is that the number of people who write primarily because they hope for a major monetary reward is vanishingly small. Even those that dre
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You realise that when you spend years writing a book based on an entire lifetime's work, after all the struggles of publishing and promoting a book, 5 years seem like a blink of an eye to reap the fruits of your hard work.
You're aware that most book writers are little guys who hardly can even make a living out of it and wouldn't do what they do if it wasn't for the hope that their work could benefit them and their family durably? You realise that few book writers are Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, right? I don't even think you consider that side of things, I think you only consider your interests. (Disclaimer : my parents were book writers and struggled.)
And do you realize that overwhelming majority of books make the majority of their money within the first year of release? Long copyright terms generally benefit the King's and Rowling's far more that it does the average author...
That said, 5 years *is* a bit short. 20 years, or life of the author plus 10 years, whichever is *shorter*, sounds reasonable to me...
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Me too, but as a professional assasin my opinion is probably biased.
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Lower barriers to entry, improved print technology, second printings, and other improvements since the 19th century mean there is a lot more competition, meaning it takes longer to make a profit on a work. This suggests longer terms, not shorter terms.
Five years is especially ridiculous if we take into account adaptations of the work in
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Additionally, improved communications technology increases the pace of meme distribution, and as a great deal of value of a copyrighted work is in the novel social interactions it enables this shortens its time of highest value.
How, precisely does that jive with your parent post with respect to the value of content not being a determining factor in monopoly length?
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Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because maybe his family shouldn't get a windfall from the surge in book sales his titles are about to recieve. Funerals are expensive too. Maybe when you die you won't care if you leave your kids with anything, but seeing as how many authors are broke most of their life, I'm sure he would just be ok with his family getting nothing. I mean, the guys not even in the ground yet and suddenly his life's work should be free? Your logic fails me. I could see maybe like 10 to 20 years or something, but jeez, copyright exists for a period of time after death for a whole bunch of reasons.
Gasp! (Score:1)
Yeah, because maybe his family shouldn't get a windfall from the surge in book sales his titles are about to recieve. Funerals are expensive too. Maybe when you die you won't care if you leave your kids with anything, but seeing as how many authors are broke most of their life, I'm sure he would just be ok with his family getting nothing. I mean, the guys not even in the ground yet and suddenly his life's work should be free? Your logic fails me. I could see maybe like 10 to 20 years or something, but jeez, copyright exists for a period of time after death for a whole bunch of reasons.
Gasp! People are not getting money for something they didn't do! Can't the state do something?
Oh wait.
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Maybe support shouldn't depend on the birth lottery of having a successful $relative.
(And preemptive "bullshit" to the argument that aptitude is genetic. In that case, let's set up a dole based on aptitude tests and be done with it.)
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You owe me a new keyboard.
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't mean those reasons are right. Copyright shouldn't allow someone to collect forever for working once. And it really shouldn't be relied on as a gift to for their family after death. If I die my family doesn't luck into some extra cash because from users of the network and computers I support.
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Yeah, but if I die, my artwork might be one day worth something and my family would have something to sell. This is why intellectual property exists, so there is something that is tangible that can be transferred. In the eyes of the law it is my property. Like it or not, I can do what I want with my property after I die as defined by my will. I disagree with the excessively long times that copyright can be extended for now, and I think 10 years or so is really kind of fine. There are other reasons that copy
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In the eyes of the law it is my property.
That doesn't mean the law is right.
The original purpose of copyright was not to define ownership. It was, like patents, intended to provide a temporary monopoly on a work. And it was designed, not so you could make a profit, but to give you an incentive to create the work in the first place -- with the hopes that it will be in the public domain eventually.
If I produced sculpture all my life, should my sculpture be suddenly public domain at death? How is writing or anything else that takes intellectual effort any different other than it exists in easily reproduced forms?
That is pretty much it. It comes back to this:
The sculpture is a physical object. Physical objects can be property. No one can take your sculpture from yo
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OT comment WRT your new signature:
Heh. Your rural life in Iowa isn't quite so idyllic? That sucks. :(
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Copyright shouldn't allow someone to collect forever for working once.
You're absolutely right. I can't think of a single compromise we could make between "expires on death" and "never expires at all".~
(My theory has always been this: 15 years. You either have 15 years or death of the author, whichever comes later. Allows people to collect off their work until they shuffle off this mortal coil, but ensures if they do die very early that the family still sees something from it. I would find that acceptable, though most of the people here probably wouldn't)
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't, mostly because I see no reason why you should keep getting a check for something you did 15 years ago. Surely you could have produced something new by then?
Yes, you could retire and live off the royalties, and it'd be great. But why should copyright be special that way? In other jobs, you set aside money for retirement. Do that with copyright -- set aside money for retirement, then you won't be penniless when your works expire.
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I see no reason why you should keep getting a check for something you did 15 years ago
Mainly because that assumes that whatever I created spontaneously jumped out of my mind one day 15 years prior.
The large majority of things that this covers would take time to make that people aren't being paid for, e.g. books/music. If it takes you a large amount of unpaid time to write something, why shouldn't you get paid for that time after you wrote it?
As far as I'm concerned, it balances itself out, and I feel 15 years isn't so long it's ridiculous, but not so short it ceases before your work's popula
Re:For those with ebook readers (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe when you die you won't care if you leave your kids with anything
I'd rather put money in the bank while I was alive rather than leave them at the mercy of the society's interest in my works. Copyright is NOT supposed to be a life insurance.
An even better solution would be to tie copyright to first publication date instead of the author's death date. For instance, it would be MUCH easier to determine whether a given book is in the public domain, because the first impression's publication date is usually printed on the second page. The authors' death dates on the other hand may be unobtainable, especially for obscure works.
I mean, the guys not even in the ground yet and suddenly his life's work should be free?
The guy's family did not write the things that were under copyright. Giving them money for someone else's work will not cause them to create more, which is supposed to be the purpose of copyright. It may be cruel not to give money to a family in mourning, but this is what life insurance is for.
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I doubt the author is planning to die. However even if he were, the fact that his kids will be provided for is as much (or more) of an incentive to create as getting the money himself.
Pity about your shitty upbringing, if that's the reason you don't grok human nature.
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I doubt the author is planning to die. However even if he were, the fact that his kids will be provided for is as much (or more) of an incentive to create as getting the money himself.
While we're at it, we could provide him with 100 virgins to increase the incentive. The point is whether the bargain is acceptable to society. The untimely death factor would be catered for if copyright was tied to publication date: even if he died before the book was published, his relatives could inherit the income, while preventing unreasonably long copyright terms.
Pity about your shitty upbringing, if that's the reason you don't grok human nature.
Your ad hominem is rather tasteless. I just don't buy into purely emotional arguments often presented by copyright advocates.
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Yeah, because maybe his family shouldn't get a windfall from the surge in book sales his titles are about to recieve.
No, they shouldn't because the intent of copyright was never intended for a revenue stream for surviving family members.
If they feel so inclined they can write their own works or invest in an insurance policy like the rest of us.
Oh and considering my estate will be taxed upon my death, if you really want copyrights to be treated as property that can be inherited then a tax needs to be levied
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Or take a different route. [amazon.com]
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So if I just kill you I can start publishing all your work? You can't hand it off to your children who might need the income due to your untimely death?
I'm not arguing against shorter copyright durations, I'm all for that, but just pointing out the naivety of your statement.
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1) Set aside a percentage of my paycheck into savings (cds,savings accounts,mutual funds,stocks... etc), and make sure that my written will is up to date
2) Perpetual copyright
3) Stuff matress full of scratch off lotto tickets
4) Government Bailout
I'm leaning toward three, what do you think?
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Yup, can't see any potential for abuse there.
How about just 20 years? I can't see any reason why it should depend at all on death or not.
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it could create Dover Death Squads or K-tel assassins.
I'm sure that Time-Life Music would be interested in that concept. Killing off has-been pop stars would be right up their tin-pan alley.
Sci Fi authors don't die. (Score:5, Funny)
They get abducted by Government agents when their books get too close to the truth. (Tinfoil hats at half price, today only.)
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Re:Sci Fi authors don't die. (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm, both Stanislaw Lem and Robert Anton Wilson "died" recently. I'm not sure which worries me more :-/
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Tinfoil hats at half price, today only.
Bob Heinlein seemed to know so much about L Ron Hubbard. It was his bet with Hubbard which initiated Scientology. I always wondered if they could actually be the same person, of if Hubbard was an invention of Heinlein.
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I always wondered if they could actually be the same person, or if Hubbard was an invention of Heinlein.
If he were, I think Hubbard would have been a better writer.
"What price salvation? Remarkably cheap! For only a low initial payment..." -- Stranger in a Strange Land
"Truely Weird" no thanks. (Score:2)
Ya know, that's really not what I read sci-fi for.
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"...and most compelling"
Ya know, that's what I like most about sci-fi actually.
Re:"Truely Weird" no thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you are the type of guy that all those unimaginative books and series are made for? Where every goddamn alien looks like a human with some patch on his nose and an unusual haircut, and you can see stranger things on underwater nature tv shows. Where they are in the future and/or in space, and do the same boring shit that they could do in a historic novel. And where you just think: "My god, this is all the futuristic stuff you can come up with?"
No offense. If you like it, be happy. :)
But I for one, just wonder why you read sci-fi then? If the weird futuristic stuff does not matter, and you even dislike it...?
I know that many people create a false dichotomy, that goes like this: Well, the story matters. Not all the weird things.
But in reality, nothing stops you from writing a good story that also includes the weirdest things. In fact there is no reason why that should not add something to it.
"Truely weird in a futuristic way" is the very point of sci-fi, in my eyes. (Good stories are what I expect in any genre anyway, and does not need being specially mentioned.)
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So you are the type of guy that all those unimaginative books and series are made for? Where every goddamn alien looks like a human with some patch on his nose and an unusual haircut, and you can see stranger things on underwater nature tv shows. Where they are in the future and/or in space, and do the same boring shit that they could do in a historic novel. And where you just think: "My god, this is all the futuristic stuff you can come up with?"
Wow. I'm not sure how you managed to draw that conclusion from what the GPP said. Personally, I don't read science fiction for the "truly weird" stuff. I read it for the imaginative science, and to me, what science does is take the weird and bizarre and make it reasonable and understandable.
There is so much crap science fiction out there, full of weirdness for weirdness sake: aliens with "weird" numbers of eyes, limbs, methods of communication, etc., most of which are weird simply to be different. It is ama
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I think that most of the best science-fiction is firmly grounded in logic, and that is where most fantasy literature fails.
If you really want to compare bad science-fiction with weird, you should read the works of R.A. Lafferty.
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You're painting a false dichotomy here. The distinction is not between "science" and "weird", it is between fiction that is derivative and tedious, and fiction that explores interesting ideas.
The "weird" stuff you're complaining about falls into the former category. The latter category consists of the hard sci-fi that you enjoy, which explores various aspects of science, and other forms of sci-fi, which explore other ideas.
JG Ballard, for instance, was a genius who displayed an incredible aptitude for explo
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Ok but what about those of us who are more the Dream Park type of sci-fi fans? In your post you mention hard versus soft sci-fi. I've always considered myself the "hard" sci-fi fan because I've always leaned more towards sci-fi that is possible within my lifetime and doesn't need to make far fetched assumptions. The "What if" within the limits of solid known science has always been more enjoyable to me th
The future isn't what we thought it'd be... (Score:2)
One other thing to consider about science fiction is that someone makes a prediction, based on the known technology of the time.
In Asimov's introduction to Foundation's Edge, he pointed out that his earlier Foundation books didn't consider the ubiquity of computers for galactic astrogation. In his first books, the pilot would refer to books that contained the locations of star systems, their relative motions, and so forth. His later books had people referring to the ship's navigational computer.
Larry Niven,
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Do I think that writers should revise because they find out their co
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Absolutely, it seems to me in any case that Ballards science fiction does not interest itself principally in the science or in predicting a realistic technological future anyway. It takes people who (had) existed at the time the works were written and finds out what happens to them when their world does something wierd.
A case in point is the wonderful Crystal World. Assorted characters loosely associated with a medical facility behave strangely as the jungle around them crystallizes. The writing is so good
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I've always leaned more towards sci-fi that is possible within my lifetime and doesn't need to make far fetched assumptions.
"Possible within your lifetime" isn't a prerequisite -- after all, it's very unlikely that anyone will build a generational space colony or a dyson sphere (or even a ringworld, or even an orbital/Halo) within your lifetime. However, all of these things seem possible.
Granted, much of the stuff on Ringworld was downright fanciful. But the world itself seemed mostly sound. (I say "mostly" because it's had to be adjusted, but these were in details like what it must be made of, and what might be done to stablize
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Fair enough, and I agree with you on pretty much every point. And I do enjoy both 'hard' and 'soft' science-fiction. I like the hard stuff (Arthur C. Clarke, Kim Stanley Robinson, etc) because the nearness to reality gives me a more visceral experience. I'll probably never actually make it into orbit and almost certainly never step foot on Mars, but, because of the 'hard science fiction' I've read, I feel I have a pretty good idea of what it would be like (I have a rather active imagination).
On the other ha
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I was going to write something longer elsewhere, but this seems to sum up what I was going to say.
It's just a story, written for entertainment. No need to read serious predictions of the future into it.
Re:"Truly Weird" no thanks. (Score:2)
Spelling Nazi corrected subject line (fixed that for ya).
If you haven't read any of J.G. Ballard's work, you can't really apreciate what he did for the field. He was one of the vanguards of the British New Wave/New Worlds movement in the 1960s who re-defined science fiction through narrative experimentation.
Recommended works include Vermillion Sands, which was a truly mind-bending collection of connected short stories; The Drowned World set in a post-apocalyptic future like no other; Concrete Island, which
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the most grotesque sexual fetish anyone has ever come up with
This is the Internet. I'm fairly sure I could destroy that in about 3 seconds on /b/, but I just ate.
Sounds interesting, though. I may have to check these out.
Farewell Shanghai Jim. (Score:1)
JG Is Now A Voice Of Time (Score:5, Interesting)
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Terminal Beach is my favorite J.G. Ballard short story. All of his sci-fi stuff is great, much of it dark and disturbing. If you like the music group Joy Division, then you may know that Ian Curtis was heavily influenced by Ballard, and even named a song, Atrocity Exhibition, after a Ballard story.
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I have not heard of this guy, and while I usually think whoop diddly bang whop another bloke is dead, in a bit of a sing-songy voice, right near, but not actually in, the back of my head, no, I mean closer to the front, this guy seems like a hoot and I'm happy the internet brought me something new today.
Update: captcha = hooted.
Re:JG Is Now A Voice Of Time (Score:4, Interesting)
Supremely Ironic Indifferent Technophilia (Score:5, Interesting)
Ballard's writing for me was always the epitome of supremely ironic indifferent technophilia and, as such, a template for our hyper-connected present. Considering he first realised his vision during the 1960s, this makes him even more of a legend. The Drought [wikipedia.org] or The Crystal World [wikipedia.org] are just fucking classics. So many Sf writers, and even "non" writers like Cormac McCarthy with The Road, are just excavating the upper layers of mine shafts that Ballard plunged into decades ago.
Re:Supremely Ironic Indifferent Technophilia (Score:5, Funny)
Please post another excerpt.
Thanks
Crash is earth-shattering (Score:2, Interesting)
No mention of Empire of the Sun ? (Score:1)
The movie adaption is half decent.
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Am watching DVD of it tonight in honor.
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Ironically I only knew him from Empire of the Sun and its sequel Kindness of Women. Both of these two were in a way supposedly quasi-autobiographical of his own experiences at the time.
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Best Ballard Book (Score:1)
I think "Vermillion Sands" has to be one of his best novels ever. in fact it's one of the best SciFi novels I ever read!
From the back cover :
Vermillion Sands is J.G Ballard's fantasy landscape of the future - a latterday Palm Springs populated by forgotten movie queens, temperamental dilettantes, and drugged beachcombers, with prima donna plants that sing arias, cloud sculptures, dial-a-poem computers and ravishing, jewel-eyed Jezebels......"
RIP J.G. Ballard.
Seen Ballard on Ronald Reagan (Score:2)
I loved this guy's work - I've got lots of his novels, and the RE:SEARCH books as well.
I liked 'Concrete Island' a lot. 'Crash' was just a bit too perverted for me.
Running Wild + Empire of the Sun (Score:2)
For a moment I thought.. (Score:2)
.. that this guy was the author of The Crystal Empire:
http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Empire-L-Neil-Smith/dp/031294070X [amazon.com]
That was a horrible book.
But Poor Ballard.. oh well.
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Let us hope that Ballard found the Lord Jesus before he passed into great beyond.
That would have been cool, but you'd think that that kind of discovery would be in all the papers. Besides, I didn't think he was into archeology.
After you die, it's too late.
True, graverobbing works only when some of the participants are deceased.
Maybe it's time for YOU to call on Jesus and turn your life over to His saving grace
Well, I did call on Dr. Jesus Perez-Lopez to save my knee. Two hours of surgery and a
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By "found", I take it you mean in the rhetorical sense, because there has not been 1 scrap of physical proof in 2000 years that Jesus / Any Other God, actually exists.
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No one is asking me to accept Julius Caesar into my life.
Whether or not a kind-hearted carpenter / illusionist existed 2000 years ago is not up for debate. Whether he is in any way related to a "god" is quite another matter.
Anyway, this is news for nerds, not a forum for bible bashers to push their beliefs down my throat.
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Depends on the variety of christian religious craziness you're dealing with. Some are of the "no belief, straight to hell!" variety. Most of the evangelicals are, in fact.