The Year Zero

The Drowned World is a 1962 science fiction novel by J. G. Ballard. In contrast to much post-apocalyptic fiction, 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. The novel is an expansion of a novella with the same title published in Science Fiction Adventures magazine in January 1962, Vol 4 No. 24. (Nova Publications.) This novella as referred to above is now out of print.

(Source: Wikipedia)

My enduring love of all things Ballardian is well known. I’m now starting to read some of his earlier science fiction work which I hadn’t read before.

I don’t read a lot of sci-fi but this was good. Set in the future in a ‘drowned world’, it focuses on three main characters who – rather than escape the blistering heat and floods that sweep the world – seek to embrace them. One of the key concepts (which Ballard also believes, I read in an essay at the back) is that our brains carry ‘archaic memories’ of primeval times. As the ‘de-evolution’ begins, those memories come back to haunt us.

When you start to get into reading Ballard you will quickly begin to pick up the key motifs which are apparent in everything he writes. Start with Empire of the Sun and you’ll know what I mean. He was brought up in a kind of ‘post apocalyptic world’ of his own (in his case an internment camp outside Shanghai) having lived a very privileged expatriate life before the war. Everything that happened to him during this time informs everything he would go on to write. Rather than hate that time of his life – he sees it as utterly visceral, real, colourful, alive. All that is the opposite of grey, anodyne, dull, lifeless, controlled, conventional.

I am totally attuned to his way of thinking, for many reasons.

A good read, doubly so if you like sci-fi.

And if you’re interested in Ballard and want to know more about him and his motifs, read this article in The Independent which is good.