Dallas Robbins

The Marriage of Reason and Nightmare

I'm sure you have had fair share of Ballard coverage lately, but today I came across an insightful commentary on his work.  Theodore Dalrymple, one of the most acute and eloquent essayists that money can buy, wrote a thoughtful critique of Ballard's importance.

"No contemporary British writer captures our malaise better than does J.G. Ballard. In a writing career dating back half a century now, he has explored with acuity, from the aerie of his respectable suburban home outside London, the anxieties of modern existence—of what he calls themarriage of reason and nightmare. The reason is our technological advance, the nightmare the uses to which we have put it."

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A Friendship with the Late J.G. Ballard, 1930-2009

Michael Moorcock writes of his late friend J.G. Ballard:

"Although literary critics were quick to minimize his years as an SF writer, Jimmy made no effort to divorce himself from his SF roots, though preferring to call himself first a 'speculative' and later an 'apocalyptic' writer. His influence was seen in the work of his admirers including Angela Carter, Martin Amis, Will Self, Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, M. John Harrison and Christopher Priest. Tending, in the early years, to rely on me to introduce him to fellow spirits, like Burroughs, Chris Evans (New Worlds’ science editor), the artist Eduardo Paolozzi (our 'aeronautics adviser') and others, Jimmy remained a modest and rather shy man, a loyal friend who avoided what he called 'the literary crowd' even more assiduously than SF conventions . . ."

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