Acknowledging yourself as a fan of the British writer J.G. Ballard –died in London in 2009– is not simple, but very simple. Because the attraction of his works is such that it is practically impossible not to end up reaching them at some point in our lives. And the sooner the better, I assure you.
There will be those who came to work after seeing the adaptation that Steven Spielberg filmed in 1987 of “The Sun’s empire” –they will be the ones who should have been the most stunned if they later approached other titles–; who did it after viewing “Crash”, David Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation of the novel of the same name; there will even be someone who discovered their “Skyscraper” recently, through the 2015 Ben Wheatley film. But let’s not just talk about cinema, much less literature, since there would be thousands of names influenced by the writer. Let’s get down to tracking Ballard’s influence on the music we love. His books and stories have given intellectual material on which to build their songs to people like The Normal, Manic Street Preachers, Hawkwind, Burial, The Bug or Empire Of The Sun –well, he gave them a name–, and especially Ian Curtis –does Joy Division’s “Atrocity Exhibition” sound familiar to you?–, Klaxons –does it not seem like a little to you that they titled their best album with the name of one of their stories?– and Thom Yorke –look for their track in “In Rainbows” and in some solo songs. A server was completely knocked out many years ago after linking the reading of “The Drought” (1964) y “Cement Island” (1974), the rest is history.
If at this point I haven’t convinced you that Ballard is an essential name in any library that doesn’t resent dystopian and speculative science fiction –don’t just think about the future, think also about a different present– and many other things Better stop reading because the rest of this text is little more than a summary only of what you will find in what, in my opinion, is the best edition of his stories in Spanish to date.
There have been several previous editions of Ballard’s complete stories, the last one in a huge, difficult-to-use billet released exactly one year ago by RBA. Part of those same stories had also been compiled over the years in different titles, but never had it been done as well as in this new edition in the Runas collection of Alianza Editorial. Two volumes of practically nine hundred pages each, new translations, a prologue by Ballard himself, an introduction by the British writer Adam Thirlwell and an indisputable quality finish. In this “Reports 1” we will find around forty stories, dated between 1956 and 1964, in the original order of their publication. Some as “Prima Belladonna”, “The city of concentration”, “Track 12” o “The smile of Venus” They are the perfect way to enter his world, although a good part of my favorites will be found in the second volume of this compilation of the referent of postmodernity.
If you already know Ballard’s work or some of his stories, there is little left to say, otherwise I will only insist that entering his work is immersing yourself in an addictive, strange, unhealthy universe at times, but from which we will never distance ourselves. Visit Vermilion Sands and let yourself go.
