Customer Reviews

Vermilion Sands

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This magnificent collection of stories was first published in 1971. Although this book frequently shows up on lists of the greatest books of all time in that genre, it is not science fiction so much as a vision of possible forms that the arts could take in the future. It is more futuristic fantasy than science fiction. This volume marked J. G. Ballard's maturation as an author. Before this work, much of his work had been highly inventive but more mainstream science fiction. More specifically, he specialized in novels along the theme "this is the way the world ends." For instance, THE DROWNED WORLD concerns the fate of individuals living in tropical London after the polar ice caps have melted, leaving much of the world underwater. In THE WIND FROM NOWHERE a never-ceasing wind destroys the planet by blowing away all the soil and making agriculture and most other forms of human endeavor impossible.

What makes VERMILLION SANDS is the sheer inventiveness of the world he imagines. It is a cheap, tacky world, not unlike a tawdry Las Vegas or Palm Springs, populated by futuristic artists and cultural has-beens. The art forms that Ballard imagines are brilliant, and feel far more familiar thirty years later than they must have felt to those in the early 1970s. After all, computers and the Internet and digitalization has constantly forced us to rethink the possibilities and forms of art. Ballard describes architecture that responds to the emotional experiences of its inhabitants and imparts some of that feeling back to those entering it. He imagines machines rather than people producing poetry, on long ticker tape like rolls of paper. Plants that sing. Sculptors who work with clouds as their preferred medium. And Ballard manages to meld these strange new arts perfectly into the lives of a rich and fascinating, if also rather sad and tragic, group of characters.

This book is, at the time that I am writing this, out of print. But it has over the years come back in print on a few occasions. I am certain that it will again. It is without question a much more interesting book than many of his that are currently in print, and if there is any justice it will once again be made available. Until then, it is well worth searching out.

This collection of elegant, minatory stories about the has-been resort community of Vermilion Sands and the human flotsam that washes up on its derelict shores comprises some of author J.G. Ballard's most accessible work. His imaginative gifts and jade cool prose are everywhere on display in these stories. Sailplane artists sculpt the clouds into likenesses of their patrons. Psychosensitive houses are driven insane by their owners and bio-fabrics shimmer and pulse to their wearers moods. Ballard likes to create strange, surreal outerscapes and unite these with the straitened innerscapes of his protagonists, then narrate what happens next. In Vermilion Sands he exceeds wonderfully

My personal favorite collection of stories from Ballard, and many people I've spoken to also hold a fondness for this group of stories. Although many of the story concepts repeat the theme of the tragic female figure and the tortured man who loves her and gets caught in the dramatic conflict, it is a lush and expansive vision that weaves through the collection. The title refers to a fictional beach resort, a playground of burnt out executives and movie stars at play, or in retreat from the rest of the world. As with most Ballard fiction, you get the distinct impression that these stories are actually taking place somewhere, and perhaps Ballard has just changed the names to protect the decadent. The vivid details of living clothing, cloud sculptors and singing sculptures are so intense, it's a bit of a surprise that Hollywood hasn't adapted some of these stories to the currently CGI movie craze. Then again, like most of what Ballard writes about, that could be coming just around the corner...

This collection of short stories has a unifying theme of happening in a very strange desert resort, Vermillion Sands. I read this book maybe twenty years ago, and many of the images have followed through my life since. Enjoyable, going from the level of soap-opera guilty pleasure to the sublime and thought provoking. Ballard is the sober man's Bukowski, laying bare the emotions of the tragedies of everyday life and also putting the extraordinary in the context of normal human experience. My favorite book of his, and one of my favorites overall. "Crash" is my next favorite, so if you like this check it out next...

The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D opens this impressive collection, and sets the tone for the nine stories of a deserted interior beach, this decadent and decaying Vermilion Sands. No story here is weak or simply filler. Ballard weaves fascinating pseudo-biological origins of singing plants, he writes descriptively and harmoniously of the derelict statues with their elusive sonic cores that screech and whine, half buried in the sand. Ballard has the daily stuff of our lives--clothes, houses, even paintings-- transform themselves in response to unconscious moods and desires, no longer everyday commonplaces but disguised totems, consuming their owners in a strange reversal of the consumer paradise. And he stretches the physics of cloud phenomena in his best story where daredevil flyers control tornadoes. All the places where the imagination wrestles freedom for itself from quotidiana and hard reality, Ballard stocks with jewels and insects and the playthings of a degenerate latter-day aristocracy--film stars mostly, but also visionary artists. Everything that makes the inventory of an Egyptian crypt fascinating to us three millennia later, Ballard re-creates by excavating the archaeological artifacts of the here and now. The only things in his world that seem unchanged are the vices of humanity--vanity, vengeance and cruelty, which are the most durable. Ballard writes in the preface (circa 1970) that this is his vision of the future. There are too too many bloated novels, too few short story collections like this.

The beachfront, decadent community of Vermilion Sands is the setting for each of the nine wonderful stories in this collection. Vermilion Sands is where the rich are. They vacation, they play, they search for lost loves, and above all, they are horribly narcissistic.

Vermilion Sands is home to the magnificent singing sonic sculptures, tall statues that emit music or atonal sounds when they sense movement. The marvelous sand yachts of the rich, their trained sand rays (giant white manta rays that float through the air), the cloud-sculptors, the living clothes, and the psychotropic houses all live on in the mind long after the stories have been read. Vermilion Sands is a striking setting, one of the more memorable in fiction.

The themes of the stories are fairly similar. Most dwell on unattainable or forsaken love. In "Say Goodbye to the Wind", a former model pines for her departed love. In "Studio 5, the Stars" an aspiring poetess dreams of tragic love. And so it goes in each story. But the stories are fresh and have enough energy to overcome a repetitive theme.

Ballard's futuristic city stands as a monument to the power of a memorable fictional setting. Indeed, Vermilion Sands is as powerful as Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown or Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris to use two recent examples. I'm hoping that Mr. Ballad has seen fit to write more Vermilion Sands stories in the 30+ years since this collection was published. I can only hope that I find more.

Entirely taking place within the Ballard-dreamt landscape the desert resort named Vermilion Sands, each story is based on some exotic art form conjured up by the author. One of the running themes is the `sonic sculpture' which tend to record sound, reproduce frequencies and harmonize with each other sculptures. The idea is intriguing (especially to someone like me with a history of both sculpting and audio production) but it is mentioned too often and becomes commonplace, rather than a centerpiece for a single story. Likewise, all the stories involve some sort of artsy gloss (poets, painters, sculptors, florists, singer, etc.) and the monotony of witnessing the artists' world is tedious and best taken in bits, like one story a day (it would have been torture to complete this in two days).

While each story in itself is good or great, treat the book as a whole and the collection spurs ennui. If Ballard were to switch it up a bit, the book make not have been as monotonous as it had been. But because, after a few days, I took it bit by bit, I found the collection to be pretty good.

The Cloud-Scultpors of Coral D - 4/5 - Flying cloud sculptures are hired to depict their work in dedication to a narcissistic heiress with varying degrees of portrayal, types of cloud meanwhile trying to withhold the artistic license. 20 pages

Prima Belladonna - 5/5 - A beautiful songstress enters town, much to the pleasure of the boys across the street but fails to impress the sonic florist, whose arachnid flower takes envy in the talent of the singer. 16 pages

The Screen Game - 3/5 - A film production crew move into town to shoot and hire a painter to color the canvas of a million square meters (nearly) who falls for an ashen prisoner who then also falls for the painter's prints. 18 pages

The Singing Statues - 4/5 - Two sculptors deceptively sell a gaudy collector a large piece, only having to return secretly every fortnight to replace the magnet tape storing the sympathetic music. 16 pages

Cry Hope, Cry Fury! - 3/5 - A lonely sand yacht captain rescues a man from the desert only to have his likeness portrayed onto canvas, which mysteriously changes overnight to be more like her long lost love. 20 pages

Venus Smiles - 4/5 - A sculptor is hired to create a sonic sculpture for the square but when unveiled, the piece is much despised so the curator takes it home and much to his dismay, the thing grows in dimension and cadence. 16 pages

Say Goodbye to the Wind - 3/5 - Organic cloth shop owner sells a new wardrobe to the girlfriend of a dead organic cloth designer and when the cloth begins throwing spasms, the relationship and mystery begin. 18 pages

Studio 5, The Stars - 4/5 - The editor of a poem magazine full of poem by so-called poets possess auto-poem machines, but when his new neighbor, also a poem, forces to handwrite their odes, chaos ensues. 40 pages

The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista - 5/5 - Psychotropic houses are imprinted with the personalities and memories of the previous tenants, but that doesn't stop a couple from moving into a house with an eerie, familiar past. 24 pages