SOURCE: Stephenson, Gregory. “Technological Tartarus: The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, Concrete Island, and High Rise.” In Out of the Night and Into the Dream: A Thematic Study of the Fiction of J. G. Ballard, pp. 63-68. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

In the following excerpt, Stephenson regards The Atrocity Exhibition as a diagnosis “of the malady afflicting modern consciousness.”

The following four books to be discussed in this [essay] may be said to constitute a sort of diagnosis and prognosis of the malady afflicting modern consciousness. The first book is largely concerned with the etiology and the symptoms of the disorder; the following three books weigh the prospects of recovery and consider various means of treatment.

The first of these books, The Atrocity Exhibition,¹ is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but a series of interrelated vignettes which possess common themes, images, and characters. The separate sections...