Mike Bonsall

My most useful JG Ballard creation is this alphabetic concordance of keywords in his published work: bonsall-books.co.uk/concordance My most recent work is this interactive Ballard short story: fentonville.co.uk/notes-towards More here: fentonville.co.uk/digital-ball...

It is that, but it's other things as well, and in Crash I've tried to find out what exactly that it is.

Ballard's last novel Kingdom Come was published in September 2006. To celebrate it's 20th birthday, I've used Ballard's text to create an imagined 'shopper experience survey' for the Metro-Centre mall at the heart of the story. (no personal data collected) Have a go here! forms.gle/19PCgLojJpsi...

Some people have suggested that mental illness is a kind of adaptation to the sort of circumstances that will arise in the future.

My stuff is about the fall of the American empire . . . I was brought up in an area dominated by Americans, by American cars, by American styles and consumer goods . . .What I've been writing about in a way, is the end of technology, the end of America.

The office of any scientific magazine is the most wonderful mail drop, the ultimate sort of information crossroads.

The Drowned World ...

AI Prompts as Literature could be a fun, dark thing. Like don't actually use AI but just read the prompts as texts. There's tons of prompt-trading hubs where you can sample these and reading the-material-demands-of-prompting-a-math-problem as style is at least as unsettling as like early JG Ballard

"We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind... For the writer .. it is less and less necessary .. to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality." -J.G. Ballard coaching.markdery.com #JGBALLARD #WRITING #WRITERS

Today’s very welcome acquisition. Until recently I confess I hadn’t realised this fine collection existed - an absolute treasure trove of short stories spanning M. John Harrison’s career to date. So much to choose from, but I’ll probably begin with the beautifully eerie ‘The Incalling’... #booksky

We're obsessed with sex, but fear the sexual imagination and have to be protected by huge taboos.

We may see a new religious leader appearing, who'll unite the Green movement and all these New Age movements.

I see Kennedy's death as a kind of catalyst of the media planet that exists now.

Fredric Jameson on JG Ballard. Such a delight.

Just suppose your free-range no-consequence bullshit was hugely entertaining when we were in opposition and shitting money, but now that we're in government and it's all gone a bit JG Ballard, it's irrelevant and infantile. —Peter Mannion, The Thick of It (2005) #RandomMovieTVQuotes

They say the news should not be too explicit.

Call for Chapters A proposed collection, Terminal Futures: Reading JG Ballard in the 21st century, invites chapters that reassess Ballard’s writing in the light of the present, and ask what the present looks like when viewed through Ballard’s work To be published by University of Westminster Press

I'm reading JG Ballard's final book, Kingdom Come. And it's more than likely I had a small hand in it. The book was written 20 years ago and is about a man looking into his father's death in a shooting incident at a shopping centre. The opening paragraph is excellent...

www.humblebundle.com/books/best-b...

This short film about J G Ballard’s views of techno-mediascapes and the fetish of the car is among the best 17 minutes of television the BBC has ever produced.

Thanks JG Ballard for inventing Citibike and Congestion Pricing in the 1971 issue of Drive magazine.

When she arrived, oddly enough, earlier in the evening, she walked in, took one look at the cars and then told me that she would interview everyone, but only topless.

Those films that I most admire -- Cocteau's Orphee, Alphaville, Marienbad, Point Blank, Blue Velvet -- are much closer to dreams than they are movies.

Absolute gem of an interview with Michael Moorcock here from 2024. Amongst other things, many fascinating reflections on the trials and tribulations of editing New Worlds magazine in the 60s. Recommended 👍 podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/t...

I was trying to analyze the formulas of the world we live in.

OTD 1965. The opening episode of ‘Out of the Unknown’, still one of the best SF anthology shows made for television. Despite the era’s inevitable budgetary & technical limitations, the ambitious remit to bring the likes of Wyndham, Pohl & Ballard to the small screen often met with stunning success.

See also Ballard's "The suburbs dream of violence..."

The constants of our lives, which most of us ignore: the wonder of existence.

Private schools are brainwashing their children into a kind of social docility, turning them into a professional class who will run the show for consumer capitalism.

RoboCop? South Yorkshirt Police have introduced an AI Assistant to handle non-emergency enquiries... 👉 FIND OUT MORE: www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/topic/502768... #Sheffield #SouthYorkshirePolice #Bobbi #AIAssistant #SheffieldForum

Maybe we're going to live in an eventless future.

I think the prosperity in the '60s and '70s induced a kind of infantilism.

When you see the truth about human beings it's beneficial -- but very challenging.

These are coming to Barnsley ! You'll see a bunch of them milling around at the foot of Harborough Hills saying "bugger that R2”. Also this being Evri how will they chuck stuff randomly into the backyard without arms.

www.thestar.co.uk/business/evr...

J G Ballard, 1974: "Will modern technology provide us with hithterto undreamed-of means for tapping our own psycho-pathologies? Is this harnessing of our innate perversity conceivably of benefit to us? Is there some deviant logic unfolding more powerful than that provided by reason?" Yes, no, yes.

Got your middle aged bisexual polyamory right here

just want to be able to read my book in peace to escape from it all 🙃

morning

He merely readjusts reality to suit himself.

JG Ballard was slated but couldn’t perform due to illness which was a shame. More here www.compulsiononline.com/live_londono...

We have to make sure that our supplies of vaccine are up-to-date.

My chronological readthrough of J.G. Ballard has brought me to 1963’s ‘The Time-Tombs’. One of the few stories to be set on another planet, it plays effectively with those tropes immortalised by Tomb-raiding adventure tales. Virgil Finlay’s striking cover certainly ramps up the drama too. #booksky

'If “The Rouse” sometimes reads like John le Carré’s “A Perfect Spy” by way of J.G. Ballard and Max Lury, Miéville transcends those comparisons with unparalleled lunges of thought about the spirit world that leave one breathless with their audacity.' www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/b...

*Worlds of If, 1958. I was four years old at the time www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6...

These days one needed a full-scale emergency kit built into one's brain, plus a crash course in disaster survival, real and imagined.

@mbonsall.bsky.social

This new landscape was a nightmare marriage between reason and fantasy.