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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where Ballard Began,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Wind from Nowhere (Mass Market Paperback)
This is one of Ballard's earliest novels, and it shows. The plot and characters are flat: the world is swept by an unexplainable storm of winds increasing up to 550 miles an hour, leading to global devastation. Survival hinges on underground refuges. A thoughtfully ill-assorted group of characters, united by chance, find themselves dealing with a peculiar industrialist and his wind-resistant stronghold...or is it? Unlike many of Ballard's later novels with their hallucinogenically lovely or compelling landscapes, The Wind From Nowhere is universally dirty and claustrophobic, almost all of the action cramped in submarines, overcrowded warehouses, or the London underground. Many of the characters are two-dimensional standards of the concluding era of 1950's sci-fi--the lovely reporter, the military men, the university professor. At the same time, there are hints of the Ballard to come; moments of tense sexuality, of down-to-earth brutality, of striking images. Perhaps Ballard was destroying the standard 1950's sci-fi universe to make way for his Triassic jungles, surrealist beauties, sliding deserts and time-wracked astronauts? Anyway, if I was just starting with Ballard, I'd proceed straight to The Drowned World and his other short stories.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Changing the Earth beyond recognition,
By
This review is from: The Wind from Nowhere (Mass Market Paperback)
It came from nowhere and had no cause that the scientists could put their finger on. It could have been unusual solar winds some researchers suggested, but really they were only guessing. It began as a stiff breeze, then increasing at a steady five miles an hour a day. It became a storm, then a hurricane, then a ground-stripping fury of titanic, unearthly proportions that threatened to wipe man off the planet. Traveling from East to West it circled the globe, strongest near the equator, weakest at the poles. It resembled those mighty gas flows that hurtle around Saturn. It threatened to completely alter the planet beyond recognition. Amid this natural fury Donald Maitland (doctor), Andrew Symington (radio expert), Steven Lanyon (submarine commander), Patricia Olsen (NBC reporter), Simon Marshall (TV expert) and Deborah Mason (secretary) will all increasingly struggle for survival as the storm grows. Their paths will cross and intermingle. Some will survive, but not all. What is to be the fate of these characters, and indeed of human kind?
This is J. G. Ballard's first novel and it is a fine effort, certainly worth reading. Many will remember this writer as the author of the memorable, social-realist novel Empire of the Sun, but Ballard began his career writing science-fiction short-stories for British magazines like <New Worlds>. Some indeed consider his best work to be the early sci-fi short stories. Knngsley Amis tipped Ballard as "the most imaginative of Wells's successors" and he indeed went on to write a number of memorable sci-fi novels, including The Drowned World, The Crystal World and Crash: A Novel. By writing a number of interconnected plots Ballard manages to make this book interesting, exciting and yet realistic. We do not feel that an unbelievable number of catastrophes, and slim escapes, happen to any one person. We are rather given the impression of a disaster on a grand scale that affects the lives of many people in various different ways. Despite there being so many characters most people are described well and have an individuality, though it should be pointed out that some are the more important than others and are more clearly defined. Like most science-fiction stories this book requires a certain "willing suspension of disbelief" and I do not recommend it to you if you prefer 'real life' stories, but if you have imagination and a free-ranging mind you will enjoy this novel.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Chaos on an Epic Scale,
By not4prophet (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wind from Nowhere (Mass Market Paperback)
J. G. Ballard was among the leading experts on destroying the world. Throughout his career he pummeled the human race with natural disaster, environmental catastrophe, economic turmoil, genetic disintegration, and other means of destruction. "The Wind from Nowhere" is prototypical Ballard, in that regards. A massive, worldwide windstorm, seemingly originating from nowhere, springs up and increases steadily in strength. Within days, buildings are collapsing and roads are impassable.
The human characters are small in every sense, emphasizing their helplessness in the face of global catastrophe. They take a back seat to the title character, the wind itself. Most of the book is a panoply of sheer destruction. Each chapter ratchets up the scale of the disaster, while futility of the bureaucratic system becomes more and more evident. Ballard's language is not as lavish as in some later novels, but the basic vocabulary here is quite fitting for the story that he's telling. It's one without beauty or hope, but certainly not without power.
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