The Drought

 

“He looked at the craft beached around him. Shadowless in the vertical sunlight, their rounded forms seemed to have been eroded of all but a faint residue of their original identities, like ghosts in a distant universe where drained images lay in the shallows of some lost time.” ― J.G. Ballard, The Drought

For someone who’s taken pride in my love of SF, I must humbly admit that I was wholly ignorant of the works of J.G. Ballard, until recently. For shame, some may say. In my defence, I might mention that my choice of reading material, living in Northern Ontario, might have been described as limited. To be fair, we did/do have a bookstore, albeit a chain. We even had an independent bookstore, for a while, too. Neither was all that large. Neither was small either – I’ve been in used bookstores whose selection beggared both combined. So, it goes without saying, before the internet, what we saw was what they had. And that was what we knew, that and word of mouth, and those lists of titles available from the publisher we might find in the paperbacks purchased. We, here, also live in the American sphere of influence, further limiting what might be had – its America-centric, but I guess you figured that out (indeed, even Canadian authors are not as widely known here in Canada as they ought to be). So, it comes as no surprise then that British authors would/could be somewhat unknown to us/me.

That’s no excuse, you might say, citing it’s been a long time since the internet made titles and authors once largely unknown in that foggy, mythical land of Before available. All true. But tastes and interests migrate. And it’s only now, in these years of nostalgia, that I’ve been looking back, revisiting old loves, and discovering new ones along the way.

I can’t say that I’m all that familiar with Mr. Ballard, even now. I know of a number of books that he wrote, that he’s a celebrated member of the New Wave of science-fiction, and that his Empire of the Sun is autobiographical. I also know that Crash was adapted to the screen, a Cronenberg film that baffled me then, and confuses me still. Perhaps that’s why it’s taken me some time to read Ballard. But Ballard kept coming up in YouTube videos I was watching, largely praising this, to me, unknown master of speculative fiction. It was their praise that convinced me to give him a try, despite my tepid dislike of Crash.

Was The Drought (1965, originally published in the UK as The Burning World, 1964) my first Ballard? It was not. That was The Drowned World (1962). Both are part of Ballard’s apocalyptic tetralogy, beginning with The Wind from Where (1961), culminating in The Crystal World (1966). In each, the world as we know it has come to an end (or is in the process of) from destructive winds, from solar disturbances that melt the ice caps, from industrial pollution bringing an end to rain over landmasses, or by the crystallisation of the world. Each stand alone. One need not read them in order, or in total, either.

I can’t comment on the first and last, but the middle two are good. Some might refer to them as masterpieces. I preferred The Drowned World, personally. I found The Drought to be a little uneven; indeed, I found the main character of The Drought to be less a protagonist than an observer. He barely plays a part in even his own narrative. Granted, he’s in shock; and despite his being a doctor, his skills are in limited use, considering the lack of materials and facilities available to him as society brakes down and the populace is in a destructive, predatory, self-preservation, downward spiral. Relationships are largely disposable, understandably, each out for themselves, for the most part; but this is a novel, and narrative arcs are what hold a story together. Story ought not to drift, as the characters here would be expected to do, unearthing water sources and food supplies. As they understandably would. There ought to be an actual plot beyond mere survival. That said, the horror of surviving in this dying world is only hinted at, glossed over, even comic in its portrayal; unlike how vivid those horrors are depicted in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Ballard's survivors are far less horriying in their loss of humanity as are McCarthy's. I expect that is why McCarthy's apocolyptic world is the greater and more famous of the two.

The Drought, by Criss Foss

I might add that I was somewhat distracted by the world itself. It is imaginary. Though British, Ballard’s Burning World is not England. It is not the continent, either. The characters all have English names. They travel hundreds of miles south to the sea (a ludicrous direction on an island nation), leading me to believe that this book must take place in a fictional North America, and that the riverbed they follow must be the Mississippi (otherwise why not head north to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, or east towards the coast). Yet the book is replete with English jargon, leaving me wondering from time to time, what the hell is a…. So too flora and fauna. We have precious few rooks here in North America, for instance. He was obviously writing for his English audience and peppering his books with things he and they would recognise.

I did enjoy it, however, despite my grievances. In fact, I'm glad I've found him and his voice. Ballard reminds me of Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham, insofar as his stories are not really about tech or even how the world came to drown or burn, his books are about how people would be affected by what if happening to them, on how they might cope with their new paradigm: altruistically, predatorily, or even catatonically. Perhaps that is why J.G. Ballard remains popular, decades after his death.

I recommend you have a dictionary hand while reading Ballard, or a search engine, just so that you can translate his Britishisms, if you are not familiar with his vernacular. Don’t be put off by that, either; the British have likely had the same criticisms of American vernacular, too.