Dystopian Fiction: Part 3
Joe Bonadonna
For
the sake of this blog, and not relying totally on memory, I have used a brief
synopsis of each novel mentioned here courtesy of Wikipedia.
If
you’ve read parts 1 and 2 of this blog, you’ll have gained some idea of the
older novels of dystopian fiction on which I grew up reading, novels that surely
inspired many other writers . . . novels
I’d hate to see get tossed in a pile or in a corner to collect dust with all
the other forgotten novels. Today I’m going to talk about one writer in
particular: J. G. Ballard.
Ballard’s
memoirs of being a kid during WWII were made into a fairly good film by Steven
Spielberg, starring Christian Bale, when he was just a kid: Empire of the Sun. Film director David Cronenberg turned Ballard’s
strange, disturbing and haunting novel, Crash
into a strangely haunting and disturbing film. I have read most of Ballard’s short stories,
and a number of his other novels, but my personal favorites are his “Quartet of
Elemental Apocalypse,” as one critic dubbed the series. To me, they depict very different dystopian futures than so many other novels.
The Wind from Nowhere is Ballard’s
debut novel, published in 1961; he had previously published only short stories,
which I also highly recommend. This is the novel that launched his Quartet of
Elemental Apocalypse — his “series” dealing with scenarios of natural disaster.
In this novel, civilization is reduced to ruins by prolonged worldwide hurricane
force winds. As an added dimension, Ballard explores how disaster and tragedy
can bond people together in ways that no normal experiences ever could. A wind
blows worldwide: it is constantly westward and strongest at the equator. The
wind is gradually increasing, and at the beginning of the story, the force of
the wind is making air travel impossible. Later, people are living in tunnels
and basements, unable to go above ground. Near the end, “The air stream carried
with it enormous quantities of water vapor — in some cases the contents of
entire seas, such as the Caspian and the Great Lakes, which had been drained
dry, their beds plainly visible.” (Since his next novel was The Drowned World, that novel could be considered a sequel to The Wind from Nowhere.)
The Drowned World was first
published in 1962, and the novel features a central character who, rather than
being disturbed by the end of the old world, is enraptured by the chaotic
reality that has come to replace it. Set in the year 2145 in a post-apocalyptic
and unrecognizable London, The Drowned
World is a setting of tropical temperatures, flooding and accelerated
evolution. At the beginning of the novel, the catastrophe responsible for the
apocalypse is explained scientifically: solar radiation has caused the polar
ice-caps to melt and worldwide temperature to soar, leaving the cities of
northern Europe and America submerged in beautiful and haunting tropical
lagoons. Ballard uses the post-apocalyptic world of the story to mirror the
collective unconscious desires of the main characters. In this novel, Ballard
examines how a natural catastrophe causes the central characters to regress
mentally. New societies emerge, with strange rites and primitive rituals. This
is a pretty grim novel, and while there is a spark of hope throughout the
story, it is always under the shadow of this “new world order.”
The
Drought was published in 1965, and is an
expanded version of his 1964 novel, The
Burning World. In contrast to Ballard’s earlier novel The Drowned World, The
Drought/The Burning World describes a world in which water is scarce. After
an extensive drought, rivers have turned to trickles and the earth to dust,
causing the world’s populations to head toward the oceans in search of water.
The drought is caused by industrial waste flushed into the ocean, which form an
oxygen-permeable barrier of saturated long-chain polymers that prevents
evaporation and destroys the precipitation cycle. Ballard liked to put normal
people in times of crisis and destruction, so as to explore their limits, their
morals, and often their basic humanity — or what’s left of it. Weird, mesmerizing, and quite grotesque, this novel tells a chilling story of the world on the
brink of extinction, where violence erupts and insanity reigns as the human
race struggles for survival in a worldwide desert of despair. For me, Ballard
knew how to paint a picture of total despair, and yet he manages to keep me
reading to find that one glimmer of hope.
Finally
we have my favorite, The Crystal World. This 1966 novel
tells the story of a physician trying to make his way deep into the jungle to a
secluded leprosy treatment facility. While trying to make it to his
destination, his chaotic path leads him to try to come to terms with an
apocalyptic phenomenon in the jungle that crystallizes everything it touches .
. . plant life, animal life, human life. It’s an unsettling story with a very
unique premise, and as in all his short stories and novels, Ballard is more
concerned with telling the tale through his characters, how the events shape
them, and how they deal with it and with each other. Ballard is more concerned
with examining the human condition than he is with telling us how and why this
“crystallization” is taking place. This is human drama, and this is what I like
about his writing. This is a surreal novel, almost a magical fantasy in its
setting. But the dark undercurrent of humanity at wits’ end, how some characters embrace
what’s happening, only succumb to the inevitable, while others continue to fight the good
fight to persevere, survive and triumph is the heart and soul of this wonderful novel.
These
are Ballard’s first four novels, and they are strongly based on elemental
themes, showing global destruction by Air, Water, Fire and Earth.
Tune in next time for Part 4, when I'll talk about "post modern" dystopian fiction, some recent novels, and a number of films of this and the last century. Thank you!
My
Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Bonadonna/e/B009I1KYIK
