Reading Climate Change in J.G. Ballard

Abstract

J.G. Ballard's early novels The Drowned World (1962) and The Crystal World (1966) take a climatological approach to apocalyptic dystopia. This has led survey studies of climate fiction to identify these novels as founding texts of the genre. Yet Ballard wrote in an era before global warming had been identified by climate scientists, and his fiction is as much psychological and ontological as it is physiological. Ballard both adheres to and deviates from the global warming narrative now accepted by contemporary climatology, working within and beyond the SF subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction. This paper assesses the extent to which these dystopian narratives can be understood as climate fiction and explores the debt that more recent cli-fi may owe to Ballard.I've always felt that people living in the cosy suburbia of Western Europe and America never appreciated just how vulnerable we were to climatic disasters.-J.G. Ballard, to Travis Elborough

Speculative Oceanography: An Historical Survey of the Literature

“…al. [3] , Miller [4] , Miller [5] Wilson [6] , Baldwin [7] , Baldwin [8] and Smith [9] , while also extending previous research by Clarke [10] , Clarke [11] , Clarke [12] , Clarke [13] and Vincent & Clarke [14], aims to reinstate that gap in the knowledge. Speculative practices about oceanography likely date back at least as far as early human maritime transport, and certainly can be noted in Roman inquiries, such as that conducted by Avienus [15] in the 4th century CE, in which he drew upon the now lost Massiliote Periplus to review the navigations of the Carthaginian Himlico from some nine centuries earlier.…”

J. G. Ballard and the ‘Natural’ world

“…Ballard's eco-disaster novels may seem far from a call to actionas David Ian Paddy (2015) has noted, with their distinct lack of derring-do they subvert the stories of imperial adventure that Ballard was raised uponbut, as noted above, perhaps they are in fact a call to a kind of radical inaction, combined with apocalyptic aesthetic attention. Jim Clarke has noted that to label these novels as cli-fi may be anachronistic (Clarke 2013). For Clarke, such an ascription risks misrepresenting Ballard's major concerns during this period.…”

“…There have been various attempts to police the bounds of this purportedly new genre of climate fiction (cli fi). Johns-Putra and Trexler (2011) for instance, who Clarke (2013) seems to follow when he argues that reading Ballard's The Drowned World and the rest of the disaster quartet as climate fiction is anachronistic. But perhaps it is the case that Ballard was ahead of his time againproducing the type of cli-fi that is only now being called for.…”

Climate change in literature and literary studies: From cli‐fi, climate change theater and ecopoetry to ecocriticism and climate change criticism

“…Clarke's analysis of J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World 144 and The Crystal World 145 as fore-runners of climate change fiction, and as influential in their distinctive use of dystopia, is particularly relevant here. 146 Robinson's adaptation of utopian and dystopian genres to accommodate the theme of climate change in his trilogy [8][9][10] is discussed by Prettyman, 147 Johns-Putra, 148 and Cho 149 ; Cho also provides a thoughtful account of Robinson's distinctive handling of novelistic time and space. In addition to utopian and dystopian traditions, climate change fiction draws on apocalyptic expectations; Wheeler's analysis of novels about the 'Anthropocene era,' such as Gee's The Ice People 19 and The Flood, 20 discusses these novels' debt to religious eschatological writings.…”

“…The idea that the contemporary novel, in engaging with climate change, has itself undergone profound formal and generic innovation is a theme not just in Trexler's analysis but in several other studies that deal with the generic experiments that occur in climate fiction. Clarke's analysis of J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World and The Crystal World as fore‐runners of climate change fiction, and as influential in their distinctive use of dystopia, is particularly relevant here . Robinson's adaptation of utopian and dystopian genres to accommodate the theme of climate change in his trilogy is discussed by Prettyman, Johns‐Putra, and Cho; Cho also provides a thoughtful account of Robinson's distinctive handling of novelistic time and space.…”