Applied Ballardianism

Memoir from a Parallel Universe

Simon Sellars, Robin Mackay (Urbanomic Media Ltd)

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English

Urbanomic Media Ltd
13 April 2018

Literature, Poetry & Criticism; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

An existential odyssey weaving together lived experience and theoretical insight, this startling autobiographical hyperfiction surveys and dissects a world where everything connects and global technological delirium is the norm.

The mediascapes of late capitalism reconfigure erotic responses and trigger primal aggression; under constant surveillance, we occupy simulations of ourselves, private estates on a hyperconnected globe; fictions reprogram reality, memories are rewritten by the future...

Fleeing the excesses of 1990s cyberculture, a young researcher sets out to systematically analyse the obsessively reiterated themes of a writer who prophesied the disorienting future we now inhabit. The story of his failure is as disturbingly psychotropic as those of his magus-J.G. Ballard, prophet of the post-postmodern, voluptuary of the car crash, surgeon of the pathological virtualities pulsing beneath the surface of reality.

Plagued by obsessive fears, defeated by the tedium of academia, yet still certain that everything connects to Ballard, his academic thesis collapses into a series of delirious travelogues, deranged speculations and tormented meditations on time, memory, and loss. Abandoning literary interpretation and renouncing all scholarly distance, he finally accepts the deep assignment that has run throughout his entire life, and embarks on a rogue fieldwork project- Applied Ballardianism, a new discipline and a new ideal for living. Only the darkest impulses, the most morbid obsessions, and the most apocalyptic paranoia can uncover the technological mutations of inner space.

An existential odyssey inextricably weaving together lived experience and theoretical insight, this startling autobiographical hyperfiction surveys and dissects a world where everything connects and global technological delirium is the norm-a world become unmistakably Ballardian.

By: Simon Sellars
Series edited by: Robin Mackay (Urbanomic Media Ltd)
Imprint: Urbanomic Media Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 385g
ISBN: 9780995455078
ISBN 10: 0995455074
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 13 April 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Kick the Dog; 2. Car City; 3. Out of Phase; 4. Lossy; 5. Queens of the Cyber Age; 6. This Alien Earth; 7. Paralipsis; 8. Threshold Moment; 9. Kill the Head and the Body Will Die; 10. Tohoku Rising; 11. The Man from Morioka; 12. Deep Assignments; 13. Bunker Logic; 14. Biomechanoid; 15. Replication; 16. Cocoon; 17. Cartographies of the Infinite; 18. Cubist Dream; 19. Untourism; 20. New Victims; 21. Fugue State; 22. Time Wars; 23. Metanoia; 24. Lost in Saipan; 25. Malign Potential; 26. Airless and Casino Black; 27. Flab; 28. Stasis; 29. Ballardcraft; 30. Black Shadow; 31. Sick Music; 32. Dangerous Bends; 33. Melborea Moronica; 34. Suicide by Thug; 35. Hostile Takeover; 36. Applied Ballardianism; 37. Roaring Mice; 38. Mental Polaroids; 39. Vat-grown; 40. Hangar Three; 41. Skyspace; 42. Solace in Dystopia; 43. Thirsty Men; 44. Kick Me; 45. State of Mind; 46. Purple Light; 47. Photoreality; 48. Scalar; 49. Emergence; 50. Wire Music; 51. Memory Hole; 52. Shadowplay; 53. James et Jim; 54. Negative Space; 55. Sleepy Brain; 56. Memory Hacker

Simon Sellars is a writer and editor. He is the custodian of ballardian.com, and the co-editor of Extreme Metaphors: Interviews with J.G. Ballard 1967-2008.

Reviews for Applied Ballardianism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe

... a brilliantly written genre mashup ... a wonderfully original mix of cultural theory, literary exegesis, travelogue and psychopathological memoir. -PD Smith, The Guardian This is a book of critical epistemology, of questioning what it is we know, what it is we can know, about and through literary texts. The refracted fluorescence of our own critical passions and compulsions visits us outlandishly, like lights in the sky. -Brendan Gillott, Minor Literature[s]