Miracles Of Life: An Autobiography - J G Ballard

This is a curious mixture of a book. Granted that it was written under strained and special circumstances, it is both revealing and concealing in equal measure. If you are familiar with Ballard’s work and have taken an interest in him over the years, you will find nothing new. It is, however, a pleasure to have it in one volume. And for all its apparent superficiality, we learn a great deal about Ballard from the structure and level of content of this work.

Nearly half the book is devoted to Ballard’s first fifteen years, the time he lived in Shanghai and experienced the strange life of an expatriate community as well as internment by the Japanese. This is also the most fluent and vibrant part of the book.

It may well be that writing of his early life in his fiction, especially in Empire of the Sun, means he is well rehearsed. But it is clear these formative years are seared not just into his memory, but also his psyche. The things he saw and experienced have re-appeared time and again in his writings, sometimes filtered, but always from the same roots.

Elsewhere, there is a reticence, a shyness that produces a sketchy feeling, as if we are seeing an early draft. A pioneer of explorations into the sf of ‘inner space’, his own inner space is closely guarded. Yet what he chooses to conceal is revealing in itself. He speaks of family life, for example, but whilst it is clear that his family was the bright sun at the centre of his universe, dimmed for a while by the sudden death of his wife, it is also clear that the rest is nobody’s business but his own and theirs. I find this wonderfully refreshing – we are strangers, after all, those of us who read his books.

As a writer myself, I confess I was disappointed that Ballard did not discuss how he wrote or consider the processes by which developed certain styles, especially his concentrated novels. I would love to have known more of those early days and the discussions he had with other writers of the so-called ‘New Wave’. On the other hand I am not altogether surprised. Whilst undoubtedly a highly intelligent man and a skilled and innovative writer, he has never been one of the ‘literati’, self-dissecting and self-obsessed. His work must (and does) speak for itself – with a voice that is robust, fluent, exciting, innovative, often tackling the controversial, but always worth listening to.

A Book Of Nonsense - Mervyn Peake

If you don’t like nonsense poems, then you will probably think this won’t be for you. Which is a shame. As with everything that Mervyn Peake did, these are prime examples of the form.

Nonsense poetry is often regarded as ephemera. In many cases this is true, they are written simply to amuse. Yet they are sometimes also profound. They are the rainbow in the spray made by waves on the rocks. The rainbow is pretty and gone, but it could not exist without the underlying elemental forces that are at play (in all senses of the word). In this collection of Peake’s nonsense verse, this is highlighted by the illustrations. Grotesque and charming at one and the same time, they deftly encapsulate great warmth and affection as well as a life giving vitality. At the same time, they speak of restless depths and unseen things.

The poems are the same. They may be playful (and skilfully written), but not only do they contain some startling imagery; they are clearly the product of a genius with a unique view of the world. The book contains his notes for the last written work that he conceived (and like the fourth Gormenghast book, never had the opportunity to work on). The notes are a poem in themselves, offering an insight into the way that Peake worked.

So, even if you class yourself amongst those who do not like nonsense poetry, please give this work a try. It is a genius at play and in it you will catch glimpses of wonderful things.

The Cleft - Doris Lessing

If ever there was a writer who exemplified the desire to improve one’s craft and to explore new ways of working, new ways of expressing ideas, it is Doris Lessing. She takes ideas where many writers would not even think of going, and if they did, would not dare to go. Bold, always questioning and challenging, her books have always delighted and surprised me. The Nobel Prize was well deserved (if somewhat overdue) and accepted in true Lessing style.

The Cleft is no exception to any of the above. It is beautifully written; a fluent narrative that I found difficult to put down. I read it without once being conscious of reading – despite the changes between the story and the narrator and the interpolations. It seemed to slip directly into my consciousness, and there it haunted me.

The narrator is a Roman historian reconstructing a myth from fragments of documents that have come into his possession. The myth tells of the beginning of human society; how women who for generations uncounted have, by parthenogenesis, produced only female offspring suddenly find themselves giving birth to Monsters – children with tubes and lumps instead of clefts.

But this is no feminist utopia destabilised by the appearance of men. That would be the simplistic route. Instead, what unfolds is a complex fable in which we see humanity struggle to come to terms with its own nature; struggle to move forward and search for some accord between apparently disparate elements.

It could have been a turgid and lengthy book, full of portentous argument, but its mythical quality and the fluency of style elevate this work beyond its specific context. It is a brilliant insight into human nature; it is clearly written by someone at the height of their powers as a writer and as a storyteller (and those don’t, sadly, always go together); and it shows the promise of new directions of work. One can but hope that Doris Lessing has more to offer us.

Finite And Infinite Games - James P Carse

This is an intriguing philosophical treatise that explores the differences between finite and infinite play. To quote the opening of the book: ‘There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.’ Carse proceeds to expand on this idea, applying it to the everyday world in a way that opens up discussion rather than making choices. Those are left to the reader.

As well as being a work of philosophy this is a work of psychology – inevitable given that it examines the ways in which people conduct their lives. In this it is an invaluable tool for any writer thinking about what motivates their characters and how those motivations and views of the world will come into conflict.

It is a short book, broken down into small sections, but it does require a bit of thought. No bad thing. I found it worth the effort, not so much for the basic thesis (which I know from other sources), but because it does open interesting insights into behaviour – something with which all writers should be concerned.

The Drowned World - J G Ballard

The Drowned World is a quantum leap forward from Ballard’s first novel. Mature, confident, and with a prose as rich, dense, and tasty as a fruit cake.

The book follows the events surrounding a survey team moored in a lagoon on a world where sea levels have risen due to an increase in the sun’s radiation. What has been created is a Mesozoic outer landscape, matched by an inner landscape experienced by some of the characters. It is that inner landscape and its relation to the environment that is explored in the novel. The lagoon is like a giant womb and many of the characters have their own private hidey-holes which are also womb-like. Within these wombs people experience strange dreams in which they regress in psycho archaeological voyages. When the lagoon is drained by treasure hunters, it is a harsh birth for some.

Whilst on the surface this may be considered sf, it does what Ballard and so many of his contemporaries were doing – making use of sf tropes and themes to liberate the conventional novel and take literature into new areas. And not just new areas of content, but of style as well.

This may seem a grand claim, but you only have to look at the recent spate of books by the literati that make use of sf tropes and themes to the acclaim of lit critters. These books (of which more in a minute) would probably not have been published had it not been for the groundbreaking work of Ballard, Aldiss, Moorcock, Harrison, Russ, Lessing, and others in the 60s and 70s.

The difference is that those early works were genuinely ground breaking and led to exciting developments in writing that continue to this day; whereas the recent spate of work is, on the whole, dreary and self-congratulatory, with little awareness of what has gone before or how far behind the times they really are. Unfortunately, so are many publishers who seem to have little awareness of how much of all this has been done before.

A case in point is The Children of Men. Lauded by critics and made into a film, it is a dull, moralising book that hasn’t the wit to improve on all the preceding books that tell the same story. Brian Aldiss told this story so much better in the early 60s. He is certainly a better writer, a better story teller, and believed so much more in the intelligence of his readers – allowing them to draw any conclusions.

I suspect that what has happened is that certain books have been written off because they have been cast as genre works. Ballard is forgiven his early works as he has become a ‘proper novelist’. Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (a fact unsurprisingly not officially acknowledged by a British parliament happy to promote yob culture by example), yet the fact she writes sf is quietly forgotten. Joanna Russ, one of the finest writers of fiction and an astute literary theorist rarely gets a mention – oh yes, science fiction.

But Ballard, along with those I have mentioned and many other writers of that vintage (and since) do not simply steal sf ideas because they couldn’t think of anything else. They are immersed in a tradition that has given us some of the finest fiction in the world. It is only in recent times that certain subjects have been deemed out of bounds by the ‘literary’ world. Which only goes to prove that the ‘literary’ world is populated by pompous fools.

The Drowned World begins in earnest the unpeeling of the modern western psyche. It is a journey in which Ballard, through all his work, shows us both the worst and the best of humanity. It is a journey made with a guide who is not afraid to take us into the darkest places, a guide who is erudite, a guide who is literate, a guide who is a great story teller. Given the subject matter, it is a journey that could continue forever. Sadly, like all of us, J G Ballard is mortal. But his example and his legacy are to be found in his books and it is our loss if we ignore them.

The Rose - Charles L Harness

The Rose, first published in 1953, is one of the great novels of science fiction. Well, strictly speaking it is a novella and there are many who say it is not science fiction. The length of the piece is irrelevant. It starts in just the right place, finishes exactly where it should, and has just the right amount of story in between those two points. Whether that makes it a novel, a novella, or a bowl of baked beans is one of those discussion that distracts from the content.

As for whether it is science fiction or not… well, I suppose it doesn’t contain much hard science (and that which it does seems somewhat quaint, ‘atomic oven’ being a great example). But that suits me. Most hard science fiction is dry as dust, peopled by cardboard cut outs, and inevitably mechanistic in its outlook. So, let us call it speculative fiction, or sf for short.

And speculate is what it does. On one level it is a philosophical argument about differing world views; on another it examines the differences between art and science. Yet it does this through the medium of a well-written beautifully constructed tale of love and jealousy. Whilst art and science are pitted one against the other, a new species of human is on the verge of emerging – one that encompasses both views of the world and so much more.

Poetical and passionate, this has long been a neglected work. Many sf writers cite it as a key work, but if you want to read it you will have to look for a second hand copy. That such an accomplished and intelligent writer should be out of print is a sad reflection of publishing today.

The edition I have contains two shorter works. One, about a chess playing rat, is a wry look at human nature. The other is another philosophical tale about ontology and the race to save the world from a change in reality. This last tale breaks one of the cardinal rules of sf, but does it with such wit, style, and fully in keeping with the logic of the story that it works well.

Charles L Harness is an author worth reading. Seek out his works and treasure them.

Across The Dark Metropolis - Michael de Larrabeiti

This final volume of the Borrible trilogy is the darkest of the books. It picks up on the quest begun in the second book and through a series of hair-raising adventures with plenty of new friends and enemies, exposing the filthy underbelly of adult society as it goes, it roars along to its terrifying climax.

The world of the Borribles, precarious at the best of times on the fringes of society, is systematically picked apart by the relentless persecution of the SBG. Recruited along with this dark force – all the darker for being based on a very real and very sinister police group – are those manipulated through their greed for money and power. It is a realistic study of how powerful elites manipulate others to do their dirty work.

As well as exposing the darker side of adult society, the journey is one in which the Borribles learn to re-assert their old anarchic values. This is anarchy in its true sense, not the propagandist version put out by the likes of the SBG or played at by bored rich kids, but the one in which people work together to assert certain basic values such as respect, freedom, responsibility, and honour.

But as I have said before, the Borrible books are not political polemics. They are rattling good adventures with exquisitely drawn characters who learn from their experiences and who grow.

Through simple story telling with great characters, Michael de Larrabeiti has created a set of books for which the word classic might have been invented. Well-written, fluent, exciting, and gritty, they still have the ability to shock with the realism of the violence – which is probably why they have remained a cult classic. Yet the violence here is shocking because it is realistic. People get hurt; the vulnerable are abused by the powerful. There is no rewind button. You cannot play that level again because you got killed. To me, those are the more shocking approaches to violence – switch off the screen and walk away. No involvement, no emotional investment, just adrenalin rush.

Not many books (and even fewer fantasy novels) have convincing villains. They are often over-played and cartoonish, twirling their moustaches and cooking up random acts of naughtiness which the hero will inevitably foil. But in Sussworth, we have a genuinely evil character. He is, of course, a caricature, but only just. Given what we now know about the mental state of some senior police officers, the increasingly unhinged messianism of Sussworth could be seen as prophetic.

Not many books move me to tears, especially on a re-read when I know what is going to happen (although knowing made some of it all the more poignant). I certainly don’t find sugary sentimentality of the type so prevalent in US TV shows, or being told what to feel does it for me. But these books are involving. The Adventurers become friends and it is difficult not to feel for their plight, especially in the darkest moments toward the end. Yet it is also a book which ends on a positive note, one of hope, one of strength.