SOURCE: Finkelstein, Haim. “‘Deserts of Vast Eternity’: J. G. Ballard and Robert Smithson.” Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction 39 (spring 1987): 50-62.

In the following essay, Finkelstein compares the ethos which animates the science fiction works of J. G. Ballard and Robert Smithson to that which inspires modern and postmodern art.

The present [essay] has grown out of my conviction that there are areas of modern or postmodern art that have been inspired by a vision or ethos similar to that which animates certain science fiction works. Robert Smithson, a minimal sculptor who was engaged from the late 1960s and until his death in 1973 in the creation of earthworks, reveals in his art and writing a profound affinity with the kind of vision which informs the writing of J.G. Ballard a writer associated with the New Wave science fiction of the 1960s. Yet—it must be said—my...