J.G. Ballard

High-Rise; a very British psychopathology

13 May 2016 6 min read feature

The first time I saw the Barbican Estate in London I was entranced. The layered terraces of pitted concrete, the crisscrossing walkways, those monolithic towers that seemed—as with Petra or Al-Hijr—like they might have been carved out of natural stone. It is rare, especially in a city like London, a

Prominence has old-school sci-fi vibes, but it’s short on story

08 Dec 2015 6 min read Review

In January 1957, J.G. Ballard first published his story “The Concentration City” (then under a different title) in a magazine called New Worlds. It takes place in a city that spans the entire universe, where streets stretch out both horizontally and vertically, with lifts and levels expanding the ci