APB-SAL is a blog about education, science, science education, fiction, science fiction, literature, literary stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes the blogger's fancy. NOTE: This blog interrogates art. It rarely make moral proclamations. For that attend the church or politician of your choice. This blog concerns aesthetics, not propaganda. Consider this as interviews with books where the interviewer presents interviewees, so you get what you need to do your own thinking.
Eileen Gunn on William Gibson's first famed novel, Neuromancer, approaching 40 years old.
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Here's J. G. Ballard on fitting himself and Burroughs within the larger literary culture.
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Words known better by males than by females (left), and vice versa
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Amazon revisits Tolkien's universe. Billion dollar investment. Interested. Withholding judgment.
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This is a collection of stories of humanity at some pinnacle (nadir?) of time when men and women devote their time to the arts. Elsewhere a reviewer described this as Ballard's only positive work.
In his preface, he writes the "heavens [of most SF stories] are like other people's hells" and that these stories display a desert resort where "work is the ultimate play and play the ultimate work"--a place he'd like to live. Ballard states this is his vision of the future although a commentary on the present.
For Judith Merril's Best SF 12, he wrote:
"Vermilion Sands is not in Arizona, or anywhere in the USA, not on another planet, which one or two people over the years have accused. Also, there is no sea here, although so many of the images, are marine--the beach ambiance, the sandrays, the reefs. This is a desert area, but so crystallized that it has almost produced a new fauna and flora of its own."
This is a bit odd since eight years later he would suggest Arizona is a spiritual ancestor--not backtracking, exactly, but it suggests his vision of it mutated, perhaps as he wrote the stories, or as he discussed them with others. Also, there's that strange, operative word "almost" which throws a monkey wrench into the sentence's ultimate sense.
Is his vision of the future positive? Most of his covers look post-apocalyptic, which may or may not have served the work, but why is it set at edge of a desert? Life may exist there, but sparsely. A desert seems to suggest life near the end of its tether. In his story, "Prima Belladonna" suggests that the life of the artist leads to a kind of death--real or not.
The arrangement of stories varied:
1971 Berkley Medallion:
The 1973 Jonathan Cape edition adds "The Singing Statues" and rearranges the order. I will assume this is the author's favored version since it appeared in this order afterward (although it's possible that the first edition order was closer to his original vision that was altered over time). The links go to commentary on individual stories:
The 1975 Panther edition adds a preface but maintains the new order. Later editions tended to follow the Panther or Cape editions (with or without the preface). So this seems to be the standard.
Perhaps the anthologizing by Peter Haining and Judith Merril influenced his first conception. The descriptive writing of the later story "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D", though, is superior. Perhaps that sets a higher bar for the collection. I don't know that flipping the order of the first two stories of the later editions is critical. The current first story, Cloud-Sculptors, does elevate the language and probably does draw in more literate readers browsing through the bookstore, but perhaps Prima Belladonna does have its own strengths.
The real advantage on the new order is changing which story comes last. Putting "The Screen Game" last does suggest the deterioration of those resort town, and perhaps of art itself, a continuing thread, but "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista" brings the art to the reader. A lot of the stories are at a kind of remove, outsiders viewing the main artists (even if the viewers might be artists themselves), but here it is clearly just an admirer of the art, who comes in, smitten, and exits profoundly changed.
I'm not sure that either story is the culmination of the works gathered here--and it is more of a collection than a solid work, so we shouldn't hold it to that level--but it does have a greater impact, emotionally and metaphorically than his first choice. Art may consume the artist as it seems to in a lot of these tales, but it doesn't often consume those who appreciate it. It shifts the frame and helps see the whole in a new light. It's interesting that Ballard had a fondness for the story--demonstrated by how he placed it second and last--when no one else chose to reprint the tale.
Eventually, the hub of commentary on the Vermilion Sands will be located here.
This story first appeared in Edward L. Ferman's The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Judith Merril, Roger Zelazny, Edward L. Ferman, Martin Harry Greenberg, Joseph Olander, Frederik Pohl, Philip Hensher.
A group of cloud sculptors--some of whom have been undermining their own work--are commissioned by the rich, Leonora Chanel, to construct her portrait in the sky.
The story opens letting us in on their certain demise.
Commentary with Spoilers:That the art is dependent on the shape of clouds, changed wind and sun, suggests the very destructibility and impermanence of art. Nolan seems to take an active part in its impermanence, pointing out death in the life of an infant:
"Illuminated by the afternoon sun [on the cloud sculpture] was the serene face of a three-year-old child....
"Nolan seemed unable to accept his own handiwork, always destroying it with the same cold humour....
"he worked away at the cloud, and then someone slammed a car door in disgust.
"Hanging above us was the white image of a skull."
The figure of Nolan might be a metaphor for Ballard's own art within the genre. See the discussion of Zelazny below, which might explain Lenore Chanel: "Let the rich choose their materials [out of which art is created]."
The character of Lenore Chanel seems to allude to two figures: Coco Chanel, the 20th century fashion guru, whose career started in what might be considered feminist revision of fashion, whose name still signifies the upper class, but whose relationship with the Nazis tainted her. Lenore is a doomed figure of pride yet adoration although it had been used by the Romantics as a personage prefiguring vampire literature. Ballard seems to have consciously used these and put Lenore in a cobra suit, an alligator suit, and peacock feathers.
Why Lenora chose these artists who attack their own art remains a mystery. Was she uninformed? Possibly, although that seems unlikely. Perhaps she had an invisible [to the narrator] self-destructive streak. Why send artists off to their possible destruction while they create your portrait? Wouldn't you fear their striking back through their art? Why mock the hunchback who is about to carve her face? It must be a kind of sado-masochistic desire to hurt and to be hurt. Or does she think that money will protect her from abuse? Yet she must know what these artists have done before, or why go to them?
There's also a bit of mystery in the style, where much of the description is evocative, brilliant and painterly:
"All summer the cloud-sculptors would come from Vermilion Sands and sail their painted gliders above the coral towers that rose like white pagodas beside the highway to Lagoon West. The tallest of the towers was Coral D, and here the rising air above the sand-reefs was topped by swan-like clumps of fair-weather cumulus. Lifted on the shoulders of the air above the crown of Coral D, we would carve seahorses and unicorns, the portraits of presidents and film stars, lizards and exotic birds. As the crowd watched from their cars, a cool rain would fall on to the dusty roofs, weeping from the sculptured clouds as they sailed across the desert floor towards the sun."
But then there are occasionally odd descriptions that are difficult to visualize:
"One was a small hunchback with a child’s over-lit eyes and a deformed jaw twisted like an anchor barb to one side."
Perhaps this is meant as a mirror to the art discussed: the grotesque. The other "anchor" in the story is the narrator's crutches, trying to anchor in the sand -- a sea metaphor without a sea, an anchor that cannot be anchored, and art that is ephermeral.
Nolan, sick of Lenora's cruelty and self-absorption, destroys both Lenora, her edifice of opulence, and the art around her. The story's ending mirrors "Prima Belladonna" a little too closely--the way Nolan and Jane both die yet live on perhaps in reality or just in myth. Perhaps the similarity explains why Ballard originally separated the two, and why he brought them together in later editions.
It depends on which edition of Vermilion Sands you read whether this story is first or "Prima Belladonna" and this is buried toward the back. Perhaps the order is immaterial, but it does suggest the importance of the work to Ballard, or perhaps to the later editor at Jonathan Cape.
It's fascinating that the tale was included in the Roger-Zelazny-edited Nebula Awards 3, in which he states all of the stories were nominated for the Nebula awards; however, it isn't listed as being one of the nominees. Nonetheless, Zelazny not only includes the story but places it at the front, suggesting its importance to the whole volume:
"Ever play Max Ernst games by staring up at that tent of blue we prisoners call the sky? If so, I think you will appreciate this story. If not, you can always do it over again yourself by regarding Up. It takes a true architect of the nervous system and the environment, however, to not only play this game, but to play it well. J. G. Ballard, I submit, is one of the greatest cloud-sculptors I have ever witnessed in action.
"So put on the appropriate piece by Debussy, and bear in mind that despite Cervantes, last year's clouds are not so useless as they may seem. No.
"I chose to open the volume with this story, to set the Magritte-mood of reality twice removed and, perhaps because of this, twice as real."
This may have been in rebellion to the rebellion against the New Wave, which was in rebellion to the Old Wave or the then-traditional SF. Or maybe the nomination snub was just a rebellion against Ballard, who had been also publishing his dismal dystopias and The Atrocity Exhibition at the same time, experimentation with the very nature of storytelling itself.
Reminder: this is all speculation. Yet how did Zelazny not know that the story had not been officially nominated? How did his editors and publishers not know?
Eventually, the hub of commentary on the Vermilion Sands will be located here.
All the guys seem to go crazy for a golden-hued female mutant named Jane Ciracylides. Except Steve, the narrator, who is attracted but restrains himself. Instead he focuses on his choro-flora--plants that sing although the conditions and environment have to be just so, or he could lose his crop.
The trouble comes when Jane visits his plant shop.
Commentary with Spoilers
The one plant she wants he cannot sell. She makes his plants sing in ways he's never seen.
She turns out to be a major singer herself, and becomes Steve's lover. It all ends when Steve suggests it will end. The ending, though, is a bit ambiguous.
The description makes it sound like the plant that she's been drawn to, is aroused. Is it that or is her entrance an act of pollination? She, after all, has insect eyes. A third possibility is that she, entranced or conscious, is consumed by the plant.
When Steve tries to pull her away, she begs to continue, so Steve prevents his friends from disengaging her from the plant.
The story makes it sound like she might have been killed, or possibly continued on elsewhere. Perhaps it's a Schrodinger's cat scenario.
Note: 1) A prima donna is a talented singer, if perhaps full of herself. 2) Belladonna is a deadly plant although it has medicinal properties. Perhaps all meanings are on display.
Judith Merril praised it as "one of the very few entirely new s-f ideas of the last few years." Also laudable is the characterization of men--those driven and those restrained. Although some of the speculation may seem implausible, it is developed in a methodical manner that feels plausible.
We have a scale that goes up to or beyond "K" (which could be true if octaves were re-vamped in the future, perhaps introducing half tones), plants that sing (that seems plausible given holes and wind, however, these create music and read the music off one another, which is a huge step). Also, what kind of mutant is Jane? Maybe?
Even though she's a human variant, she feels alien although her parentage brought her from Peru. Perhaps this is in such a distant future that science indeed feels strange. It's also interesting that she is said to cheat at cards. Perhaps this is meant to suggest that she somehow also cheats at life or some other endeavor, to make it interesting.
Elsewhere, Ballard argued for more sex and violence in the arts. It's interesting that they launched his career.
First appeared in If. It won the Hugo and was reprinted in several major retrospectives by Donald A. Wollheim, Terry Carr, Robert Silverberg, Damon Knight, Total Effect, Isaac Asimov, Stephen V. Whaley, Stanley J. Cook, Thomas Durwood, Armand Eisen, Leonard Wolf, Clarkson N. Potter James E. Gunn, Eric S. Rabkin, H. Bruce Franklin, Thomas F. Monteleone, Frederik Pohl, Joseph D. Olander, Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, Edel Brosnan, and Peter Straub.Summary:Humanity has been slaughtered an artificially intelligent machine, built to fight WWIII. The last five humans are trapped, immortal but tortured in the belly of the machine. Any time they attempt escape, their fates are made worse.
Analysis:
"I was the only one still sane and whole. Really.
"AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all."
"[D]eath was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way to defeat him."The narrator kills his companions to spare them of eternal horror. The computer--as much a creator as the created--transforms the narrator to be stripped of his humanity:
"Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human."
"We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn't God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity."In other words--I suspect--the computer went insane because it couldn't move (or whatever feature that humanity has that the computer cannot have). Stephen Hawking's sanity despite ALS seems to disprove this theory (although maybe Hawking is too intelligent to display his insanity or lacks the omnipotence to destroy humanity and turn the rest of us into slugs, but let's assume he's sane). Moreover, if AM has this incredible omnipotence, yet is trapped in place, wouldn't his powers be enough to simulate movement or create a facsimile of himself that can move?
"Most of the time I thought of AM as it, without a soul; but rest of the time I thought of it as him, in the masculine... the paternal... the patriarchal... for he is a jealous people. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged."But this machine god does not act like previous gods, but one of pure malevolence. Rather, the interesting part is the masculine aspect. In fact, he describes Ellen's having sex with the men as being "serviced." So perhaps what we hear described is what happens when men become machines.
It's hard not to feel for Ellen. She clings to or favors the man who favors men. Why? Because he presumably does not expect anything from her. She'd taken the narrator twice out of turn, which the narrator refers to with some pride. But this shows a number of aspects in their relationship: She mechanically does each man, presumably to keep them happy. Does it make her happy? The narrator seems to assume so. Four men, one woman. If the reverse were true, presumably the men would be equally pleased."Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine-pure Ellen; oh Ellen the clean! Scum filth."It's hard not to imagine this attitude slipping out in tone and/or subtext, even if it were not verbalized. It's at least partially understandable that she is not as fond of the narrator as Benny who was apparently gay. Despite this, for some reason, Benny has been making love with Ellen.
"two great machine with glass-faced dials that swung back and forth between red and yellow lines whose meanings we could not even fathom"Like Ellen, the machine is the thing we cannot fully understand. When we create, we do not anticipate the later repercussions. We create relationships, machines, things we don't fully grasp. We end up down a long, painful road going somewhere we hadn't intended, unable to voice our horrors. Insane.
"[L]uck plays no part in the writing of a novel... [To be a juggling acrobat or a writer] All you do is get on and start pedaling..."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"I’m certainly no Luddite*.... [O]ne has to immerse oneself in the threatening possibilities offered by modern science and technology, and try to swim to the other end of the pool. I think my political views were formed by my childhood in Shanghai and my years in a detention camp. I detest barbed wire, whether of the real or the figurative variety. Marxism is a social philosophy for the poor, and what we need badly now is a social philosophy for the rich..., some moderating set of values, whether the noblesse oblige, the obligation owed to the less fortunate by the old English upper classes, or the Buddhist notion of gaining merit.... [M]odern communications landscape creates a different system of needs and obligations."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"[A]s in Dalí’s paintings, there are more elements of collage than might meet the eye at first glance. A large amount of documentary material finds its way into my fiction.... [including] a transcript of a secret tape recording I made of my then-girlfriend in a rage.*"-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"[T]o have a novel accepted in the States again means I will have to write about a bushy-tailed mammal who joins a nature commune and falls in love with a tree."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"[T]he synopsis reflects, for me, a strong belief in the importance of the story, of the objective nature of the invented world I describe, of the complete separation of that world from my own mind. It’s an old-fashioned standpoint (or seems to be, though I would argue vigorously that it isn’t) and one that obviously separates me from the whole postmodernist notion of a reflexive, self-conscious fiction that explicitly acknowledges the inseparability of author and text. I regard that whole postmodernist notion as a tiresome cul-de-sac."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"I’ve never aborted or abandoned anything, perhaps because everything I’ve written has been well-prepared in my mind. I write the complete first draft before returning to the beginning, though of course I’m working from a fairly detailed synopsis, so I’m sure of my overall structure."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"[Before the synopsis,] I talk over ideas to myself on the machine,... type out little ideas, let my mind wander. [N]otes [cover] everything from the main themes to the details of the setting, the principal characters, etcetera, all of which I’ve daily speculated upon in the months before I begin."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"I do a first draft in longhand, then do a very careful longhand revision of the text, then type out the final manuscript.... The word processor lends itself to a text that has great polish and clarity on a sentence-by-sentence and paragraph level, but has haywire overall chapter-by-chapter construction, because it’s almost impossible to rifle through and do a quick scan of, say, twenty pages."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"In the case of the novels, the synopsis is much longer. For High-Rise, it was about twenty-five thousand words, written in the form of a social worker’s report on the strange events that had taken place in this apartment block, an extended case history.... By synopsis I... mean... a running narrative in the perfect tense with the dialogue in reported speech, and with an absence of reflective passages and editorializing."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"With short stories I do a brief synopsis of about a page, and only if I feel the story works as a story, as a dramatic narrative with the right shape and balance to grip the reader’s imagination, do I begin to write it."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"[W]e should immerse ourselves in the destructive element. Far better to do so consciously than find ourselves tossed into the pool when we’re not looking."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
First appeared in New Worlds. Reprinted a dozen and a half times (some major retrospectives) by Amabel Williams-Ellis, Mably Owen, Edmund Crispin, Damon Knight, Edmund Crispin, Richard Curtis, Rob Sauer, Robert Silverberg, Martin H. Greenberg, John W. Milstead, Joseph D. Olander, Patricia S. Warrick, Bernard C. Hollister, Ralph S. Clem, Sheila Schwartz, V. S. Muravyev, Malcolm Edwards, Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Tom Shippey, Edel Brosnan, and John Joseph Adams.
Beautiful story construction: crush protagonists, reprieve, and crush again. Misery compounded until... they have a secret room all to their own, we breathe a sigh of relief for these gentlemen. An average room invokes a sense of wonder for the reader as we boggle at its comparative enormousness. Then their generosity puts them in the same fix they started off with. There's a note of optimism at the end, but is it intended ironically? I suspect so. Ballard may have seen this as frogs accustoming themselves to life in a slowly cooking pot. It's little wonder that Ballard was disliked by those who prefer the triumph of human spirit.
"Recurrent ideas assemble themselves, obsessions solidify themselves, one generates a set of working mythologies, like tales of gold invented to inspire a crew. I assume one is dealing with a process very close to that of dreams, a set of scenarios devised to make sense of apparently irreconcilable ideas. Just as the optical centers of the brain construct a wholly artificial three-dimensional universe through which we can move effectively, so the mind as a whole creates an imaginary world that satisfactorily explains everything, as long as it is constantly updated."-- J.G. Ballard in the Paris Review interview
"[T]he surrealists have been a tremendous influence on me, though, strictly speaking, corroboration is the right word. The surrealists show how the world can be remade by the mind....
"[I]n all my fiction, I’ve used the techniques of surrealism to remake the present into something at least consonant with the past."
