Win The Voices Of Time And Other Stories Conceived By J.G. Ballard Disseminated As Booklet
some really brilliant stuff in here very few of the stories have aged at all, and ballard rarely hangs a story on speculative or dated science.
wish hed write a woman once in a while though, I loved these short stories so vivid and the imagery haunts me occasionally still, The "Garden of Time" story in particular filled me with irreconcilable pathos, I wonder why I have not gotten around to reading more Ballard I'm not much of Sci Fi fan, but I am glad this was recommended by a friend.
Ballard had my attention from page one, There wasn't too much of the over used science vocabulary about space ships and all that turns me away from other SF works.
I love the suspense stories especially, Manholeis an homage to Chekhov's "The Bet" I'm going to briefly review each story individually, The stories included in my edition, with this cover, are not all the same as those listed in the description here on Goodreads.
“Voices of Time”stars
I dont know why exactly, but I was blown away by this story.
I found it the most difficult to follow in the whole collection, and I think that is what made the story so great: it leaves a lot of detail for the reader to fill in.
Ballard sets the scene the reader realizes the reality, assuming the story “works” for a given reader, It worked for me. This story has it all: obscure references to a past WWgenetic mutation from nuclear radiation, resulting in awesome and creepy creatures an eerie disease threatening the human species an unsettling, mysterious ending to a space mission a limited, teasing form of contact with aliens and general metaphysical balltripping related in my opinion to the incomprehensible nature of time and the insubstantiality of the physical world, at least from the perspective of an insuperably human mind.
“The SoundSweep”stars
This story was far too long for what it was, The concept was kind of coola near future where “ultrasonic music” has rendered audible music obsolete and where people have discovered that sound leaves an annoying residue which must be “swept” awaybut Ballard asks far too much of the reader in terms of caring about characters that no one in their right mind would care about.
To that extent, the story exposes a prominent weakness of Ballards: character development,
“The Overloaded Man”
A pretty awesome story about the contingency of meaning, reminiscent of Plato's cave, but in reverse.
A man methodically disassociates his understanding of objects in the visible world, effectively turning everyday objects like chairs and houses into abstract shapes and colours.
To be clearthis guy is just losing his shit, . the only thing he wants to associate with is the thought of a young, supple female, With respect to everything else, hes content to clear his mind of comprehension, to simply view the world: view, not understand.
Everything mends together, and the man falls into a sort of trance, euphorically perceiving a wonderful scene of, well, nothing: the noumenon, if you will.
Ahh, the ineluctable modality of the visible: not only is vision merely a 'mode' of experience because other senses are lacking, but also because the mind cannot form a concrete, sensible perception of its surroundings without the subject's innate and learned knowledge about the nature of that which is viewed.
“Thirteen to Centaurus”stars
An unsettling storyI cant for the life of me understand why anyone would sign up for this study and subject his or her offspring to such a circumscribed life of utter naivety.
Nonetheless, I have to back Ballard here because he gives us a scifi story which breaks away from the mainstream scifi bandwagon in which space travel is a foregone conclusion.
The government has an interesting project here, with foreseeable benefits, but, still, I really cant understand how Ballard could conceive of such a study ever flyingyeah, so the original subjects agreed to it.
. but signing your and your progenys lives away Its like agreeing to be a slavewhere's the rightful honour It's abominable.
Anyway, it reminded me of life in the vaults in Fallout, but at least that shit was sensible,
“The Garden of Time”
A decent little fairy tale about a husband and wife who live on the edge of timeperhaps its more accurate to say beyond time, but that ignores the fact that time does catch up with them in the endputting off the inevitable.
“The Cage of Sand”
So theres this guy who designed a city for Mars and couldnt face his disillusionment this woman whose husband's coffin is a oneman rocket revolving around the earth along with other unlucky space pioneers why not take them downyou can't convince me it's not worth the cost and a failed astronaut.
And they all saw the immense potential of space travel, . but it just didnt pan out, So theyre all living like hooligans near the old launch site in Florida, So why wont you dumbasses leave Ballard psychologylol, Honestly I really didnt like Ballards delivery, found the characters hard to care about, and their situations basically silly, but I have to hand it to Ballardthe ideas are there, and theyre pretty damn commendable.
“The WatchTowers”stars
This is strange one, I like it. What is this city Who occupies the Towers Why are they watching, what do they want, who is funding them and why I guess these are all versions of the same question.
None of the plebs seems to know, and they're scared, Rightly so: whoeverwhateverit is up in those Towers, they have some, like, “TheHangingStranger”byPKDlike powers, which is damn frightening.
This setting also reminds me of maybe a society progressing to an even more extreme, like state.
First the 'overlords' watch, intimidate, then assimilate I mean, . but now the WatchTowers arent even seen, can't even be feared, acknowledgedpeople are free to act in accordance with their preferences as if they werent being watched, studied, judged.
What is the meaning of this!
“Chronopolis”
Ok Im sorry but this could almost befor me, even though Im certain the exact same story couldve been conveyed to me instar fashion.
That is to say that Im often not the biggest fan of Ballards execution, if thats not clear yet, But damnanother sick thought experiment, What if clocks are outlawed Why What if cities became so overpopulated that the only way to avoid unutterable congestion were to schedule everyones daily functions for them, handing down authoritative timetables on the basis of social rankI mean that would solve the problem right No one would bump into one another, wed all be in the right place at the right time.
But what if we wanted to go somewhere else, do something else, plan for ourselves Well then I guess we cant count hours, minutes, seconds anymore.
Unless we go to jail, Whew. Makes sense A few of these stories depict future worlds in which particular human senseshearing, in a couple of caseshave evolved so far beyond those of the present day that they bring with them new conceptions of what constitutes music or, at the other end of the spectrum, noise pollution.
Evolution implies mutation, and a few of the characters in these stories certainly would qualify as mutants, The sound sweep in the story by that name, for instance, has such sensitive hearing that he is like one of the superheros of the sitelinkMCU.
"The Overloaded Man" is an interesting spin on mutation as here the protagonist appears to be practicing a particular sort of desensitization, dulling his senses rather than sharpening them.
Inasmuch as most of the action takes place in the main character's visual field, I think this story would work well in comic book form for me, this one read like the origin story of a comic book villainperhaps call him "Devolution"
The vast majority of the characters in the stories are adult males.
"The Sound Sweep"
includes a strong female character, but she is presented negatively, as a diva whose career peaked long ago, but is now in decline.
Because the narrative of "The Overloaded Man" is focalized through the consciousness of the story's protagonist, we are never presented with the protagonist's wife directly, but only with his impressions of and thoughts about herand these, again, are negative.
In general, I enjoyed the tight plotting, and Ballard's imagery and style, "The Sound Sweep" was particularly interesting with its themes of art, love, class and revenge, In some ways, I found this story closer to European modern dramasitelinkStrindberg or sitelinkIbsenthan to typical science fiction.
"The Waiting Grounds" stood out for me, as it reminded me not only of sitelinkHeart of Darkness but also of
If you've not read Ballard, I would suggest he is like sitelinkRay Bradbury, but darker and more dystopian.
Краток психолошкодистописки научнофантастичен роман во кој е претставен свет кој најверојатно умира после многубројните војни и експерименти врз животните и дел од луѓето, што доведува до појава на деформирани суштества чија природа пробува да ги приспособи на новите услови за живот, но недоволно успешно. Главниот лик, преку кој може да се каже дека е претставено и човештвото како целина, го очекува својот личен пропаст одбројувајќи ги деновите кои му преостануваат, како и пропаста на целиот универзум.
“Отсекогаш се претпоставувало дека еволуцијата вечно се движи угоре, но врвот всушност веќе е достигнат и патот сега води удолу, кон заедничката биолошка гробница. Тоа е безнадежна и засега неприфатлива визија за иднината, но е единствена. ” En mi afán completista, tenía que leer el resto de cuentos que no aparecían en la edición de Minotauro de.
Ambas ediciones solo tienen tres relatos en común: Las voces del tiempo increíble relato, de lo mejor que he leído últimamente, El barrendero de sonidos que gran idea para un relato y El hombre sobrecargado.
Estos son los cuatro cuentos diferentes para esta edición:
Zona de terror, Larsen está en una zona de retiro, en pleno desierto, en una urbanización donde solo están él y un psicólogo.
La idea es la de la empresa de Larsen, para darle un respiro, Pero de repente empieza a tener alucinaciones,
Nicho. Donde se experimenta con tres pacientes la necesidad de dormir,
Zona de espera. El protagonista se traslada a Murak, en otro planeta, para trabajar en el observatorio, Va a estar dos años, sustituyendo a su predecesor, que en principio iba estar el mismo tiempo, y ya lleva quince años allí.
Por qué, se preguntará.
Ocaso. Ya apenas queda gente en la Tierra, La explotación del planeta ha eliminado, literalmente, incluso los océanos,
Nuevamente, he quedado fascinado por la imaginación y la puesta en escena de estas historias, además de por la forma de escribir de Ballard.
Every so often I love to sit down and enjoy a collection of J, G. Ballard short stories, even if I have read them all before, read for my pulp fiction class Another magnificent collection of perceptionaltering weirdness by one of the finest author's the United Kingdom has ever produced.
'The Voices of Time' not only reaches the same vertiginous heights of excellence that his 'Terminal Beach' achieved, but, somehow their reach is somewhat higher not only are these finely wrought tales hugely engrossing, they are also profoundly inspirational truly, J.
G Ballard's tremendous talent was a greatly rewarding gift for all lovers of superlative thinking! The best prose in science fiction you can wish for.
The happenings constitute a different world where people are still trying to adapt, The book lost me here and there but then, a great idea or a good ending shook me and prepared me to go on to the next tale.
The story in this small, but magnificent novella, smell so weird, Themes such as personal isolation, biological fantasies for time, space and cosmos are blended into Dr, Power's mind.
As the end of the mankind, or maybe the cosmos, is about to come, he physically and mentally decay in its own end.
It's a tribute to both the nature and scope of Ballard's imagination that thiscollection of stories has scarcely aged at all.
The technological barely concerns him, only intruding into his narratives as a part of the fabric of life, Where it is central, as with the capture of embedded sound in 'The Sound Sweep', it's often so bizarre as to be completely original.
But what really seems to motivate Ballard is mood, Again and again he returns to the same haunting images, like a vulture circling the carcass of his unconscious, Abandoned cityscapes recur constantly, a recapitulation perhaps of his boyhood experiences of an evacuated Shanghai, It makes for an eerie body of fiction that I find irresistible,
The most notable stories in this collection are 'The Overloaded Man', a frightening study of the nature of perception, and 'The Garden of Time', a tale of decline and fall that is simple and momentous enough to achieve mythic status.
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