In his early stories and novels he subjects the world to a series of catastrophes that science is unable to understand, let alone avert. Most disconcerting, perhaps, is that Ballard's protagonists rarely make an effort to avert disaster; rather, they are drawn to it on a deeper level. Although Ballard's disaster fantasies can be seen as part of a tradition in British literature that extends back at least as far as Mary Shelley's
The Last Man (1826), critics James Goddard and David Pringle have noted that "they were written as parodies of this sub-genre of SF, and that they should in fact be regarded as psychological novels--stories of success when viewed from the particular perspectives of the protagonists."
In Ballard's subsequent fiction, consumer culture takes on the role of a global plague, and his heroes continue to respond with their usual creative ambivalence. These works, most notably the story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) and the novel Crash (1973), were condemned by some at the time of their publication for their oblique style and graphic sexual depictions. The first American edition of The Atrocity Exhibition, in fact, was destroyed in the middle of its print run when publisher Nelson Doubleday Jr., while touring his printing department, was outraged by the contents page he saw rushing past him.
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