Here's a link to seven half-hour mp3's of JG Ballard stories as dramatized on the CBC's Vanishing Point (If you can't get quick time to work there try this link). Of all Ballard's work that I have read, The Dead Astronaut made a particularly strong impression on me. When I was a child I had wanted to be an astronaut as many young children do and had even made it in to school studying Aerospace Engineering for a couple of semesters before joining the Army.But, as far as being an astronaut goes, and I hope I don't sound bitter, it seems to me to get to that level in any profession it takes more single-minded obsessiveness than I'm capable of. For me, maybe I lack focus, but there are just too many interesting things out there to spend so much time doing just one of them.
It was in fact The Dead Astronaut that largely inspired the title of this blog, although at the time I only had the impression of the story in my head and not the story itself. Often I have a sense of melancholy for the death of the Space Age, the waning days of transcendent and maybe naive hope that America and much of the world
had held as embodied by Collins, Aldrin, and Armstrong. Early on, even after tragedy, people held strong to the ideal. My generation experienced some of that, but I also remember the images of Nixon on TV when I was very young and maybe a bit of Vietnam. Then, after a peanut farmer, an actor was made president and was shot by a man who was inspired by a cult movie. Somewhere along the way, we fired one of our employees in Panama and one of our bogeymen walked away leaving us to s
cramble to find another lest the people get any ideas. Decaying space age enthusiasm killed 14 more, however not as many seemed to care about the second as they did the first. A quick war for oil preceded another one, with many of my fellow soldiers suffering from an ambiguous illness known as Gulf War Syndrome.Many other things happened as well that has brought us to this point. Are we the first generation to believe that society's in decline? Studies have shown that ours is the first not expected to do as well as our progenitors. And our successors of half to one step seem content with their world of gimmickry technology and shiny things.
Now Ballard's land and mindscapes haunt me, as I watch Toffler's Thirdwave unfold while the jestor that made me laugh and gave me hope passed a short time ago.
RE/Search Publications has some great Ballard publications. I highly recommend starting with this independent publisher (V.Vale) for an introduction to Ballard's work.
Thanks to Rick McGrath for making these radio programs available. He's got a wealth of Ballardian Dystopia available online.
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