These linked micro-tales are the moment we saw the emergence of a new, enduring voice from JG Ballard: no longer just one of a generation of visionary British science fiction writers, but now also a prophet of apocalypse and place, modern technology and pop-culture, violence and dislocation, sex and death. This book would lead on to his not-quite-trilogy of Crash, Concrete Islandand High-Rise, the books that today define his reputation and style. A short 12-line piece from the book, ‘Arrival at the Zone’, perfectly captures the tone.
“They sat in the unfading sunlight on the sloping concrete. The abandoned motorway ran off into the haze, silver firs growing through its sections. Shivering in the cold air, Talbot looked out over this landscape of broken flyovers and crushed underpasses.”
And then, three lines later:
“Against the drab concrete the white fabric of her dress shone with an almost luminescent intensity.”
Within pages we are seeing lurid visions of Monroe, of the Kennedys, of Elizabeth Taylor, in a world of ruined concrete and violence. The effect of these fractured shards is cumulative. The Atrocity Exhibition is the most frightening, dread-drenched book I have read.
First published in The Atrocity Exhibition, Jonathan Cape, 1969
A Personal Anthology 