Vermilion Sands: J. G. Ballard (Vintage classics) - Softcover

Ballard, J G

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099273586 ISBN 13: 9780099273585

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2001

Synopsis

A FUTURISTIC COVER - COMES WITH 3D GLASSES!

Welcome to Vermilion Sands, the fully automated desert-resort ready to fulfil your most exotic whims. Home to the idle rich it now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. Discover prima donna plants programmed to sing operatic arias, dial-a-poem computers and psychosensitive houses capable of murder. These quintessentially Ballardian short stories of dystopian modernity are Ballard’s ‘guess at what the future will actually be like’.

About this title

Review:

"Pure, weird pleasure" (Los Angeles Times)

"Ballard's best and most characteristic work is in his early novels and short stories" (New Statesman)

"The most significant English novelist of the second half of the 20th century" (Will Self Prospect)

"A writer of enormous inventive powers, Ballard has, like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filing the empty, deprived spaces of modern life with invisible cities and the wonder worlds of the imagination" (Malcolm Bradbury New York Times Book Review)

"Ballard is a magician and a literary saboteur...He is one of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination – and a national treasure" (Guardian)

From the Publisher:

'Ballard is a magician and a literary saboteur' Guardian
‘One of the brightest stars in post-war fiction’ Kingsley Amis

‘He is one of the few genuine surrealists this country has produced, the possessor of a terrifying and exhilarating imagination – and a national treasure’ Guardian

Vermilion Sands is a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world. It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions – a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners’ neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.

‘A writer of enormous inventive powers, Ballard has a remarkable gift for filling the empty, deprived spaces of modern life with invisible cities and the wonder worlds of the imagination’ Malcolm Bradbury

‘Ballard is amongst our finest writers of fiction’ Anthony Burgess

'One of the grand magicians of modern fiction' Brian Aldiss

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0099273586
• ISBN 13: 9780099273585
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224