>>88
Hmmm...the lines quoted are intriguing.

Ballard's a bit of a glaring hole in my general culture, but a lot of artists whom I DO know and admire esteem him highly, so maybe I should make an effort to check him out, even at this late date.

His volumes - some of them dauntingly bulky to the eyes of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old - were certainly among those I used to see lying around, together with Moorcock's and others, in the living quarters of the older boys and of the younger, more approachable, "hippy"-generation teachers in the last two or three of the British boarding schools I attended around 1973, '74, '75. Possibly, the only reason I fastened on Moorcock rather than on Ballard was because the former's novels tended to be flimsy little things in comparison to giants like "Stand on Zanzibar", running to only 100 or 150 pages. I have no doubt, though, that Ballard was the finer author.