The Crystal World [Paperback]

J. G. Ballard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1988

J. G. Ballard’s fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical environment but also its inhabitants.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Beautifully rendered Ballard the poet in full ecstatic blast.' Anthony Burgess 'Of all the unknown regions Ballard's imagination has opened up, this crystalline forest is the most haunting, with its golden orioles frozen in a lattice of jewels and men like conquistadores embalmed in diamond armour. The creation of the crystal world is something magical and not to be missed.' Guardian 'Brilliantly imagined, dark, brooding, convincing and powerful.' New Statesman 'By far his strongest and most individual novel.' Brian Aldiss --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

J.G. Ballard is the author of numerous books, including Empire of the Sun, the underground classic Crash, and The Kindness of Women. He is revered as one of the most important writers of fiction to address the consequences of twentieth-century technology. His latest book is Super-Cannes. He lives in England.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374520968
• ISBN-13: 978-0374520960
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #343,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Shanghai in 1930, J. G. BALLARD is the author of sixteen novels, including "Empire of the Sun," "The Drowned World," and "Crash." He lived in London until his death in April 2009.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's barely science-fiction but who cares? November 27, 2002

By Michael Battaglia

Format:Paperback

Even by the most basic definition of "science-fiction" this book barely makes the cut . . . it doesn't really take place in the future, doesn't feature new technology, doesn't try to rewrite the laws of physics, you can even understand it without a degree in higher mathematics. Ballard's always been too concerned with the psychological and what lies inside the human heart to be a real SF writer but in the end, it's the story itself that counts, whatever genre label you want to slap onto it. What makes this book so effective is the calm contrast of the utterly unfathomable with the completely normal. Dr Sanders receives a letter from friends in a part of Africa saying really weird stuff about everything turning to crystal . . . curious, he travels there and finds that there weren't speaking metaphorically . . . everything, trees and all, are slowly being converted to crystal, and there's mounting evidence that the rest of the world is going to soon follow suit. Against this backdrop Ballard lets Sanders attempt to make some sense of what's going on. The unwaveringly calm tone of the novel only accents the subtle creepiness of the whole affair and every time you think Ballard's run out of ways to describe crystals and jewels, he figures out yet another one. Symbolism and imagery run amok in this story, there's definitely some sort of quasi-religious (or at least good/evil) aspect to all the crystalization going on but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Which is another good thing about the book, unlike most SF writers Ballard doesn't take the conceit that everything we encounter in this Universe we can understand and while possible explanations for what's happening abound (most of which don't make any sense anyway) there's never a definitive reason given, so at the end of the book you're left with a lot of questions, but the good kind, the kind that make you think. Thus readers expecting neat and tidy endings are advised that will be disappointed if they go into this book with that sort of attitude. In the end it's Ballard's realistic tone set against fantastic events and his ability to draw the reader into his world and make it come alive (even while the world itself is fossilizing) that causes the book to linger in your mind. His haunting depiction of a crystal world won't be something you'll easily forget.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ILLUMINATED MAN January 22, 2006

By Robert L. Brockett

Format:Paperback

Owing more than a passing salute toward Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, J. G. Ballard's THE CRYSTAL WORLD also resembles a more obscure work by one David Lindsay, A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. Just as in Conrad's masterpiece, Ballard's complicated protagonist Dr. Edward Sanders must venture up a West African coastal river to discover not only his own fate, but the fate of the world. Once a devoted caregiver to lepers in a hospital in Fort Isabelle, Sanders goes to find two friends, Dr. Max Clair and his wife, Sanders' ex-lover and aide-de-camp at the leproserie, the lovely but dark Suzanne, living now at a jungle clinic in a remote outpost far upriver. He has received a strange letter from Suzanne in which she describes the great forest as "glistening like St. Sophia," herself as "becoming excessively Byzantine," and the native peoples as "walk[ing] through the dark forest with crowns of light on their heads." Understandably, Sanders is both intrigued and distressed--and, we soon decipher, still very much in love with Suzanne, or at least his memories of her.

First Dr. Sanders, who appears to us as something considerably less than Burrough-esque but more than a mere clod, is forced to wait in the river station of Port Matarre for someone willing to take him further up the Matarre River to the almost mythical Mont Royal, where the Clairs may be found. Port Matarre is an exceedingly strange, purgatorial place, steeped in shadow, a place where, as Sanders remarks to a traveling priest, "The sun seems unable to make up its mind." Here he meets a young journalist, Louise Peret,who bares more than a passing resemblance to Suzanne Clair, although Louise is lighter of complexion, a somehow brighter version of her "somber twin" Suzanne Clair. This play of contrasts, of light and dark, good and evil, perfection and corruption, is maintained throughtout Ballard's work here.

Sanders does finally locate a willing host to take himself and Louise Peret upriver to Mont Royal. There they find the military has been busy attempting to cordon off huge tracts of the forest in an attempt to slow the creeping transformation of it into a world of bright crystal-like encrustations, beautiful, we are made to understand, even beyond Ballard's brave and incessant attempts to describe. (This same phenomenon is being reported in other parts of the world, notably Miami, FL.) This veritable cancer of crystals proves too malignant for all the men and their science to withstand, and soon Ballard's story itself seems hopelessly trapped inside it. The claustrophobic quality here is palpable and disturbing. In the end, we are confronted with a fantastic vision of Sanders tramping through a jeweled nature, glittering in crystalline petrifaction, bearing a large wooden crucifix encrusted with crystal-solvent gemstones, which he desperately waves around like some mad Christian. Suzanne, having contracted some latent form of leprosy, has been lost to the forest, "frozen like an icon," while two men Sanders can never really know are locked in battle over the fate of a dying woman, until the forest claims them too.

Just as in Lindsay's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, Ballard has given us metaphysical allegory dressed up as science fiction. While Ballard's work seems to me more Christian in its manifest accretions than Lindsay's more gnostic, Blakean rendering, still they tell much the same story: The hero's journey through a world of opposites, constantly in flux, always toward something not yet seen, that, once envisioned, proves powerfully seductive, yet noble enough to cause our hero to sacrifice himself or herself to it completely, to dissolve back into that world that was always there but never fully realized until the end.

J. G. Ballard's THE CRYSTAL WORLD is science fiction genre writing about as much as Plato's REPUBLIC is a tableau about table manners. Good writing always transcends genre. (For myself, genre has ceased to exist. There is only good writing, bad writing, and everything in between.) In the end, what is truly remarkable about THE CRYSTAL WORLD is Ballard's deftness to ally ourselves with him on Sanders journey into light and darkness. In very short order, we are swept up, unquestioning the astonishing, deeply disturbing world he creates for us. And that, my friends, is just good writing.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The jewels of the Sun June 13, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Responding to a cryptic letter from a former lover, Dr. Edward Sanders journeys into the African interior and discovers that, through a solar prodigy, an expanse of rain forest and all within it have begun to crystallize. As Sanders is drawn deeper into this mysterious experience he discovers the same dark human venality at work, played out against scenes of paradisal wonderment. As he did in Empire of the Sun, Ballard imagines a strange, new world; hidden just beneath and quite at variance with this one The Crystal World is an eerily beautiful book. Richly imagined and written by one of the premier writers of our time. Read and enjoy.