A User’s Guide to the Millennium

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Flamingo 1997

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996

Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1996

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Author photograph by Jerry Bauer

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Source ISBN: 9780007292790

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2014 ISBN: 9780007484201

Version: 2017-03-24

Praise

From the reviews of A User’s Guide to the Millennium:

‘Like Wilde, like Burroughs, Ballard has a great facility for paradox, inversion and subversion. He points a camera at a subject from a new and oblique angle, focuses, and invites us to look through the lens. The insights come flowing thick and fast. In an age when novels are going the way of poetry and becoming an increasingly minority interest, here is a writer who still really matters. There is enough meat here for the most ravenous of appetites.’

DES TRAYNOR, Irish Independent

‘A rich and varied collection of journalism from one of our major novelists. There is much to relish and wonder over. The pieces are short but supercharged, reminiscent of Orwell at his best. Ballard is the least provincial and inward-looking of writers. His autobiographical piece on his return to Shanghai is remarkable. Ballard is a very divergent and original writer and his mordant wit, evident in so much of his work here, comes as something of a surprise.’

City Life

‘Ballard is a highly imaginative essayist with a wide range of interests and a marvellous eye for a telling juxtaposition.’

NICHOLAS MOSLEY, Daily Telegraph

‘Ballard is never less than trenchant and accurate. Originality and provocativeness are the chief tools in Ballard’s literary kit.’

ROY HERBERT, New Scientist

‘He may live in suburban Shepperton, but he still has the cruel glare of Shanghai in his soul.’

NICCI GERRARD, Observer

‘A writer capable of the most amazing narrative feats. A canonical writer, and something of a loose cannon, J.G. Ballard can gut a book with the dexterity of a Billingsgate fishwife. He is a master of the pithy review.’

JOHN SUTHERLAND, Sunday Times

‘A fine aphorist, and one of the finest apologists for his troubled time.’

ALAN BOLD, Glasgow Herald

‘A brilliant anthology that includes fantastic pieces on Dali, Coca-Cola and Einstein. Totally essential.’

i-D

From the reviews of J.G. Ballard’s novels:

‘Is Ballard our best novelist? Perhaps. He’s certainly the most interesting, the one whose account of the last half of this century has the most to tell us.’

New Statesman & Society

‘Ballard is the most modern of writers; his art engages with the artefacts and obsessions of the second half of this century in a manner and with an intensity unmatched by any other writer.’

WILLIAM BOYD, Daily Telegraph

‘Ballard is a magician of the contemporary scene and a literary saboteur. No one else writes with such enchanted clarity or strange power.’

IAN THOMSON

‘One of the most brilliant and unnerving of writers … Ballard is a writer with talent to burn.’

The Times

‘Ballard has claims to be the most interesting living English writer at work. He offers a consistent and unmistakable view of the world, an alternative reality, strange yet coherent.’

Guardian

‘A writer of extraordinarily distinctive vision and power.’

Literary Review

‘One of the most sensitive and enigmatic novelists of the present day.’

Times Literary Supplement

‘Present in everything Ballard writes is that sense of a unique and profoundly original mind.’

ANGELA CARTER

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

1 FILM

Casablanca, Brando and Mae West, Star Wars and Blue Velvet …

2 LIVES

Nancy Reagan, Elvis, Howard Hughes and Hirohito …

3 THE VISUAL WORLD

Warhol, Hockney, Dali and the Surrealists …

4 WRITERS

Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, the Marquis de Sade and William Burroughs …

5 SCIENCE

Einstein, the Gene Pool, Freud and Richard Feynman …

6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY

From Shanghai to Shepperton …

7 SCIENCE FICTION

Inner Space, Early Manifestos, and the Billion Year Spree …

8 IN GENERAL

Coca-Cola and Walt Disney, Mein Kampf and the Astronauts …

9 AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Memories of the Rising Sun …

Keep Reading

Index

Acknowledgement

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

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