FREE READ The Drowned World 107

READ & DOWNLOAD The Drowned World

FREE READ The Drowned World 107 Ð [Download] ✤ The Drowned World By J.G. Ballard – Johns-cycling-diary.co.uk First published in 1962 JG Ballard's mesmerizing and ferociously prescient novel imagines a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming have melted the polar ice caps and Triassic er First published in JG Ballard's mesmFirst published in JG Ballard's mesmerizing and ferociously prescient novel imagines a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming have melted the polar ice caps and Triassic era jungles have overrun a submerged and tropical London Set during the year the novel follows biologist Dr Robert Kerans a. Although today JG Ballard is perhaps better known as the author of two books which became major films—Spielberg's Empire of the Sun and Cronenberg's Crash —he was first praised for a uaternity of post apocalyptic novels published in the early '60's The Drowned World 1962 the second book in this series—as well as Ballard's second published novel—was greatly admired by readers of speculative fiction and caused Ballard to be considered one of the great lights of the “New Wave” The Drowned World is often described as a sci fi version of Heart of Darkness but if so it is a topsy turvy take on the Conrad classic The world is warming due to an atmospheric erosion caused by events in the sun and a heat wave accompanied by floods is moving slowly toward the poles With the heat comes a luxuriance of tropical vegetation reminscent of the Jurassic period; it seems the Heart of Darkness has come to Old England not the other way round When Kurtz here ”Strangman” arrives from the south in a motorized yacht filled with dark henchman he is no spent madman expelling a last breath but an energetic grinning sociopath intent on looting the last waterlogged treasures of LondonThe plot is merely serviceable the character development sketchy but plot and character are beside the point What is important here is setting and theme perfectly realized by Ballard's precise yet poetic prose His descriptions of the pitiless sky of a ghostly submerged observatory of the flooded streets of London rife with gargantuan plants and of a collective nightmare where iguana calls to iguana through an eternal tropical forest remain in memory long after the book is doneOf course for those enlightened enough to believe in global warming this is scary stuff and close attention to Ballard's themes make it into something even scarier He postulates a world where extreme climate change may act not only upon our superficial behaviors but also upon the neurological structures of the brain Could the heat and wetness of an atavistic jungle awake the ancient reptile within Are the iguanas of our dreams calling to each other Or are they calling to us