A press release from the BL touting the news contained something that caught my eye. Listing Ballard’s achievements, the Library tells us he “predicted the rise of terrorism against tourists, the alienation of a society obsessed by new technology and ecological disasters such as the melting of the ice caps”.
It was echoed in a tweet, from the Library’s Head of Media Relations, Strategic Marketing and Communications Miki Lentin.
“Ecological crisis, technological fetishism…JG Ballard archive acquired by British Library”
Sort of like Mystic Meg, then.
But is this really true? While disasters recur in Ballard’s fiction, the reason they are so vivid, Shaun again reminds us, is “because it’s what we really wanted all along”. They weren’t ecological predictions, or warnings. They explored our desire for apocalypse. If they predicted anything, it was the media’s desire for eco-porn, and our thirst for the End Times.