The Complete Short Stories confirm Ballard's stature as a craftsman of the short story, which often suits his surreal brilliance above and beyond later novels such as Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. In his Introduction, Ballard reflects, "the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow for ever in the deep purse of your imagination." Time and again, whether exploring the furthest reaches of science fiction, or the banal surrealism of English suburban life, Ballard's perverse insight lodges itself in your imagination, as he explores and often punctures what he refers to as "that over-worked hologram called reality". This collection will delight devotees, but it will also allow readers new to Ballard to experience a short-story writer of the stature of Borges, Bradbury or Edgar Allan Poe. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Synopsis
This first volume in a two volume collection of the acclaimed short stories by the author of "Empire of the Sun", "Crash", "Cocaine Nights" and "Super-Cannes" - regarded by many as Britain's No. 1 living fiction writer. With sixteen novels over four decades - from "The Drowned World" in 1962 to his highly acclaimed "Super-Cannes" in 2000 - J.G. Ballard is firmly established as one of Britain's most celebrated and original novelists. For all that time he has also written short stories; in fact, many people consider that he is at his best in the short-story format. These highly influential stories have appeared in magazines such as "New Worlds", "Amazing Stories" and "Interzone", and in several separate collections, including "The Voices of Time", "The Terminal Beach", "The Day of Forever", "The Venus Hunters", "The Disaster Area", "Vermilion Sands", "Low-Flying Aircraft", "Myths of the Near Future" and "War Fever". Set out in the order in which they were originally published, these stories provide an unprecedented opportunity to review the career of one of Britain's greatest writers.