Thanks to Tim from the JGB Yahoo group for this link… Saturday February 11, 2006 The Guardian Ambit 182 Autumn 2005 (£6.50. UK subscriptions £25. www.ambitmagazine.co.uk) “Edward Paolozzi, the pop artist who died a few months ago, was a contributor to Ambit for many years. In discussions for what would turn out to be his last illustrations for the [...]

Now I’ve heard it all… J.G. Ballard used to explain UFO sightings of the ‘Prophet Yahweh’… So, I’ve seen the video, and this guy stands in a park in a city underneath some major military and commercial air traffic routes, and “summons” UFO’s. Now, there is a short story by J. G. Ballard (”Empire of the Sun”, “Crash”, [...]

Now screening in Seattle. Sounds tedious. But what do critics know? “Peep “TV” Show PRO: Watching Yutaka Tsuchiya’s Peep “TV” Show is a lot like reading J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition—both are not easy to get through but are vital works of art. Peep “TV” Show is about a society (contemporary Tokyo) that is mediated to the [...]

What we’ve hinted at on Ballardian (ie JG Ballard’s Enlargement Phalloplasty; Why I Want to fuck John Howard), some people have ‘examined’ (ooh, err…nurse!) in a…ahem….’full frontal’ (ooh, vicar!) no-holds barred fashion. I picked up from our stats that a site called Fetish Fish has linked to our Bruce Sterling/JG Ballard interview in a piece [...]

LitLine, a ‘website for the Independant Literary Community’, has published its list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels. Coming in at No. 1 is “Call me Ishmael” (Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851). Then, at No. 81 they have “Vaughan died yesterday in his last car crash” (J. G. Ballard, Crash, 1973). A fine choice [...]

Recently, for the first time, I read Ballard’s debut novel from 1962, The Wind from Nowhere, having resisted it for so long because I could never stand those early Ballard short stories like ‘Now Zero’. Of course, Ballard disowns Nowhere, and it’s not hard to see why, with its torturously long sentences and empty symbolisms, and [...]

UPDATE: Read our interview with JGB, in which he discusses Kingdom Come and more. Someone sent me this link to an Amazon entry for Ballard. There’s no synopsis, just this: KINGDOM COME: JG Ballard Not yet published: you may still order this title. We will dispatch it to you when we receive it from the publisher. Edition: Hardcover Product Details: # Hardcover [...]

A head-on collision Monday sent Sen. John Ensign and an aide to the hospital. Ensign and the aide who was driving were taken to Sunrise Hospital with minor to moderate injuries, police said. A hospital spokeswoman said there was no record of Ensign being admitted. Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said the Nevada Republican and a Senate staffer, who was not identified, [...]

Whale spotted in central London A seven-tonne whale has made its way up the Thames to central London, where it is being watched by riverside crowds. The northern bottle-nosed whale, which is 16-18ft long and is usually found in deep sea waters, has passed Parliament and is moving upstream. A rescue boat has been sent to protect the [...]