The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

This is the first time I have used two stories by one author (knowingly—but that is another Annual, and another author). Not that I have opposed the practice on principle: In fact, if I were to lake my title literally, most of the Annuals would be limited to the work of five or six authors; it is a rare, happy year when any more than that can be said to be writing the best.

In a given year, I may find anywhere from a handful to a dozen of truly exceptional stories (by perhaps two-thirds as many authors). Beyond that, there may well be four or five times as much good interesting material as I can use.

This collection represents a field of writing: the field as well as the writing. Even if there existed some scale of critical absolutes against which a story might be measured for literary merit, I would have little interest in sifting out individual candidates according to decimal-point distinctions of near excellence. I am more concerned with “representativeness.”

Who are the new writers? Which magazines are most interesting? What are the new concepts and foci of interest? How do they relate to current work in other fields of writing? To current thinking in science and philosophy? To world events? S-f is speculative writing, after all, as significant for its statements (and its questions) as for its means of expression.

But only as significant; not more so. S-f is a specialized way of writing about ideas. The development of techniques for the expression of new concepts—new modes in language, narrative, and structure—are an essential part of what (ever it is that) we mean by S-F.

All these factors, then, must be considered in weighing the (merely) very good stories against each other—and against the inclusion of two (or more) selections by a single author from the smaller group of outstanding stories. Ordinarily, they operate in favor of variety. This time—

As it happens, Ballard published only one new short story during 1965. “The Volcano Dances” appeared originally in Gollancz’s 1964 collection. Terminal Beach—which I did not see until the fall of 1965. “Giant” was the obvious “qualified” choice—but I could not get “Volcano” out of my mind, once I saw it, and it had never been published here at all, whereas “Giant” had been in Playboy, and was scheduled for SFWA’s Nebula Awards anthology as well—for excellent reason; leaving it out of a 1965 “best” collection was simply absurd. It kept going back and forth like that, until the new Ballard stories started appearing in early ‘66 issues of Impulse, New Worlds, and Ambit.

This is truly new work for the author as well as the field, it is experimental in style, controversial in content, provocative, evocative, and unforgettable. It establishes Ballard clearly as the significant author in the field today, in all the ways I try to consider. In all likelihood, it will also establish him as a storm-center of critical controversy—but that will be small change from last year.

Not everyone likes Ballard’s work; no one can ignore it, or ignore his impact (as writer and angry critic, both) on other Writers in the field. No serious critical consideration of s-f last year failed to make pointed reference to him (Amis in Holiday, Aldiss in SF Horizons, Butler in Spectator, etc.). His loudly pronounced notions on “inner space” were so widely echoed that he himself stopped using the phrase. He was compared by reviewers to Conrad, Kafka, Bradbury, and Burroughs (William).

It would be as easy, and as inapplicable, to compare him with Camus, or Poe, or Ionesco, or C. S. Lewis. What he has most in common with any of them is best stated in Aldiss’ summing up, in a lengthy comparative critique of three British writers: Other writers . . . are copying. Ballard is originating.

Certainly, he is s-f’s most-published author right now (bar the perennial re-re-re-issues of Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke).

Doubleday last year reprinted his first two novels. The Drowned World and The Wind from Nowhere in a combined hardcover edition, at about the same time that the third one. The Drought, was published by Jonathan Cape in England, and (as The Burning World) in a Berkley paperback here—and the first three chapters appeared in Ambit, a highly regarded British literary magazine. Berkley reissued an early collection, and Gollancz reissued their Terminal Beach (slightly different in contents from the Berkley edition), while the title story (an obscure, difficult, demanding piece which violated almost every convention of s-f writing) was widely reprinted (including in the 10th Annual).

As I write, Ballard’s newest novel. The Crystal World, is about to appear in both countries (Cape and Farrar), and Berkley has just released a new collection. The Impossible Man, and other Stories. Another collection is forthcoming from Cape, and Doubleday is planning the first American hardcover collection.

Meantime, reviews and critical writings by the author have been appearing in The Guardian and Ambit, as well as in New Worlds. Perhaps the best clue to Ballard the writer is to be found in Ballard the critic, who asked impatiently about one book:

. . . one seriously wonders whether the author has any idea of the real nature of his subject matter. What is the point of this book? Does it have any relevance to anything except itself?

From the critic too, presumably, came the tearsheets of George MacBeth’s poem, which I would otherwise never have seen.