The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

General Information
===================
Title: The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
Author: J. G. Ballard
Read By: Mark Ashby
Copyright: 2007
Audiobook Copyright: 2009
Genre: Science Fiction

File Information
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Number of MP3s: 50
Total Duration: 58:54:36
Total MP3 Size: 2,430.91
Parity Archive: No
Ripped With: audacity
Encoded With: LAME
Encoded At: CBR 96 kbit/s 44100 Hz Mono
Noise Reduction: Adobe Audition
ID3 Tags: Set, v1.1, v2.3

Book Description
================
"More than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting,
cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature."-William
Boyd

The American publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is
a landmark event. Increasingly recognized as one of the greatest and
most prophetic novelists, J. G. Ballard was a "writer of enormous inventive
powers," who, in the words of Malcolm Bradbury, possessed, "like Calvino,
a remarkable gift for filling the empty deprived spaces of modern life
with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of imagination."

Best known for his novels, such as Empire of the Sun and Crash, Ballard
rose to fame as the "ideal chronicler of disturbed modernity" (The Observer).
Perhaps less known, though equally brilliant, were his devastatingly
original short stories, which span nearly fifty years and reveal an
unparalleled prescience so unique that a new word-Ballardian-had to
be invented. Ballard, who wrote that "short stories are the loose change
in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels
available," regretted the fact that the public had increasingly lost
its ability to appreciate them.

With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very
art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard's inimitable style
was already present in his early stories, most of them published in
science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric
and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses,
time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks. Over the next fifty
years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics,
including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation,
and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as "being enervated
and corrupted by the modern world" (New York Times), Ballard began to
examine themes like overpopulation, as in "Billenium," a claustrophobic
imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter
rooms, or the false realities of modern media, as in the classic "Why
I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan," a faux-psychological study of the sexual
and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan's face on television,
in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite
politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Given Ballard's
heightened powers of perception, it is astonishing that the dehumanized
world that he apprehended so acutely neither diminished his own febrile
imagination nor his engagement with mankind, evident in every story,
including two new ones for this American edition.

So eerily prophetic is his vision, so commanding are his literary gifts,
the import and insight of J. G. Ballard's deeply humanistic and transcendent
works can only grow in years to come.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Martin Amis
Author's Introduction
1. Prima Belladonna
2. Escapement
3. The Concentration City
4. Venus Smiles
5. Manhole 69
6. Track 12
7. The Waiting Grounds
8. Now : Zero
9. The Sound-Sweep
10. Zone of Terror
11. Chronopolis
12. The Voices of Time
13. The Last World of Mr. Goddard
14. Studio 5, the Stars
15. Deep End
16. The Overloaded Man
17. Mr. F Is Mr. F
18. Billennium
19. The Gentle Assassin
20. The Insane Ones
21. The Garden of Time
22. The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista
23. Thirteen to Centaurus
24. Passport to Eternity
25. The Cage of Sand
26. The Watch-Towers
27. The Singing Statues
28. The Man on the 99th Floor
29. The Subliminal Man
30. The Reptile Enclosure
31. A Question of Re-Entry
32. The Time-Tombs
33. Now Wakes the Sea
34. The Venus Hunters
35. End-Game
36. Minus One
37. The Sudden Afternoon
38. The Screen Game
39. Time of Passage
40. Prisoner of the Coral Deep
41. The Lost Leonardo
42. The Terminal Beach
43. The Illuminated Man
44. The Delta at Sunset
45. The Drowned Giant
46. The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon
47. The Volcano Dances
48. The Beach Murders
49. The Day of Forever
50. The Impossible Man
51. Storm-Bird, Storm-Dreamer
52. Tomorrow Is a Million Years
53. The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
54. Cry Hope, Cry Fury!
55. The Recognition
56. The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D
57. Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan
58. The Dead Astronaut
59. The Comsat Angels
60. The Killing Ground
61. A Place and a Time To Die
62. Say Goodbye to the Wind
63. The Greatest Television Show on Earth
64. My Dream of Flying to Wake Island
65. The Air Disaster
66. Low-flying Aircraft
67. The Life and Death of God
68. Notes towards a Mental Breakdown
69. The 60 Minute Zoom
70. The Smile
71. The Ultimate City
72. The Dead Time
73. The Index
74. The Intensive Care Unit
75. Theatre of War
76. Having a Wonderful Time
77. One Afternoon at Utah Beach
78. Zodiac 2000
79. Motel Architecture
80. A Host of Furious Fancies
81. News from the Sun
82. Memories of the Space Age
83. Myths of the Near Future
84. Report on an Unidentified Space Station
85. The Object of the Attack
86. Answers to a Questionnaire
87. The Man Who Walked on the Moon
88. The Secret History of World War 3
89. Love in a Colder Climate
90. The Enormous Space
91. The Largest Theme Park in the World
92. War Fever
93. Dream Cargoes
94. A Guide to Virtual Death
95. The Message from Mars
96. Report from an Obscure Planet

New Stories for the American Edition:
97. The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B.
98. The Dying Fall


Enjoy and Seed!!