The Complete Short Stories Volume 1

At close on 800 pages, this had been an ongoing project to read/complete all of Ballard's short stories. Volume 1 comprises his efforts, 1956 to 1964. Ballard describes the short story as the “loose change” (i.e. — often forgotten) of fiction, but notes that whereas there are “no perfect novels, there are many perfect short stories”. Within this collection it is certainly possible to see the seeds of much later Ballard fiction, albeit with a slight personal bias, I can see also the antecedents/homage to Defoe/Conrad/Kafka in this collection. While there is a strong science fiction bias, Ballard notes — correctly — that much of what he writes about is already present and visible. There is a quite remarkable prescience in much of Ballard, and some seems disarmingly relevant in the current COVID era. If there were a criticism, then it would be the oft-noted one elsewhere of a tendency to repetition. Reading the stories in short bursts, of course, alleviates this problem.

By J. G. Ballard