Book Review: Applied Ballardianism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe, by Simon Sellars
“In another life, I might have joined a radical church, a star cult. In this one, I attempted a PhD.” To engage thoughtfully with the work and life of science fiction*-and-literary-and-postmodernist author J.G. Ballard is, perhaps, to risk transforming oneself into a J.G. Ballard protagonist who must struggle through a J.G. Ballard world without the benefit of J.G. Ballard constructing the plot of his or her trajectory. Such is the lesson of Applied Ballardism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe, Simon Sellars’ much-anticipated exploration of how a greatly admired author can colonize a person’s imagination to an extent that borders on the dangerous.
