One of the nice things about writing for a publication that doesn't impose a tyranny of topicality is being able to go back and examine a book you missed the first time around.
A User's Guide to the Millennium, published in 1996, has dated surprisingly well, especially given the fact that the essays and reviews collected here originally appeared - mostly in English publications - between 1963 and 1995. I admit that I wasn't aware that Ballard was such a prolific nonfictionist. There are more than ninety pieces collected here, which he wrote more or less during a time that also saw him turn out two dozen novels and story collections.
What's also surprising is how relatively conventional Ballard's nonfiction writing style is, though he does offer high praise for Lynch's Blue Velvet and DeSade's 120 Days of Sodom. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but after all this is the guy who penned "stories" like "Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan," not to mention Crash, a novel which expanded the boundaries of perversity almost immeasurably.
The pieces here are assembled into eight categories - Film, Lives, The Visual World (visual arts), Writers, Science, Autobiography, In General and Science Fiction and while there are only a few duds in the bunch, some of the best are those in which Ballard holds forth on science fiction, a genre he has done as much as anyone to broaden. Included are several of his early Sixties musings on inner space, his and a few other writer's reaction, essentially, to the space opera that still seems to dominate the field even to this day.
Also worthy of mention is Hobbits in Space, from 1977, in which Ballard examines the fledgling Star Wars phenom and asks "why all the fuss?" a question still being asked three decades later. Another standout is a 1987 essay that lends the book its name. In it, Ballard examines some SF films he does like, starting with Forbidden Planet and working up to The Road Warrior.
Ballard, who doesn't seem to mind being lumped in, more or less, with the SF crowd, is unstinting in his praise for William Burroughs, another highly original talent who tended to dance around the edge of the genre. Surprisingly, he also has kind words for the work of Ray Bradbury, of all people.
As for the beleaguered genre itself, Ballard is ambivalent. At one point he states that "science fiction is the true literature of the twentieth century" and in another piece calls it "the strongest literary tradition of the twentieth century. Among the not so sunny quips he fires off are shots at the "reactionary s-f writer's guild" and his impatience with those who cling to a genre "still dominated by largely the same set of conventions" and "the same repertory of ideas," as those set forth by H.G. Wells and the creators of Buck Rogers.
William I. Lengeman III is gearing up for Y3K. It's never too soon to start planning. More on his misspent writing life at http://wileng.home.mindspring.com/ and http://wileng.blogspot.com/.
© William I. Lengeman III
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