The Crystal World

by J. G. Ballard

Paperback, 2008

Status

Available

Call number

PR6052 .A46

Publication

Harper Perennial (London, 2008). 1st printing thus. 191 pages. £7.99.

Description

J. G. Ballard's fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical environment but also its inhabitants.

User reviews

LibraryThing member yarb
Wonderfully elegant and strange and vivid. A typically Ballardian protagonist, an emotionally obscure doctor, gets mixed up with a small cast of fellow-foreigners in a central African (Cameroon, we're told, but I think actually Gabon, right on the equator) which is undergoing crystallization. The
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same process is underway elsewhere in the world and seems to be connected with heavenly bodies: galaxies, stars, the moon. The crystal brings a kind of geometric order to space, replicating itself with countless baroque reconfigurations, coating plants, crocodiles, people in polychrome crusts, but also seems to be freezing or desiccating time:

The beauty of the spectacle had turned the keys of memory, and a thousand images of childhood, forgotten for nearly forty years, filled his mind, recalling that paradisal world when everything seemed illuminated by that prismatic light described so exactly by Wordsworth in his recollections of childhood.

The characters seem to double each other and the prose replicates itself, too, words like "sheathed", "prismatic", "jewel" revolving through the novel. But the brightness and beauty of Ballard's vision mean it doesn't become dull. Ecstatic paragraphs like this abound:

The sky was clear and motionless, the sunlight striking uninterruptedly upon this magnetic shore, but now and then a stir of wind crossed the water and the scene erupted into cascades of colour that rippled away into the air around them. Then the coruscation subsided, and the images of the individual trees reappeared, each sheathed in its armour of light, foliage glowing as if loaded with deliquescing jewels.

(the "wind on the water" calling Genesis to mind), or this:

They were soon within the body of the forest, and had entered an enchanted world. the crystal trees around them were hung with glass-like trellises of moss. The air was markedly cooler, as if everything was sheathed in ice, but a ceaseless play of light poured through the canopy overhead.

...with those hissing glass-like trellises of moss whistling off the page like a lurid, lucid dream.

Clearly a major influence on Vandermeer's Annihilation, and in fact Alex Garland, giving names to the unnamed characters of that novel for his brilliant film adaptation, borrowed at least three from The Crystal World. The same themes are here, of uncheckable cancerlike growth, of metamorphosis, of the unknowable other and how we approach it, seek to know it, fight it, flee it or embrace it. Just crazy good shit and straight to the top of my Ballard ranking.
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LibraryThing member tikitu-reviews
From mentioning Ballard to a couple of friends, it seems I don't have the same associations with him that many others do. This is the Ballard that I know and love: magic realism, a strong but unspecified religious underpinning, and the story plays out in lush jungle which bulks large in the
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internal lives of the protagonists.

It's not about sex.

As a science fiction writer (of a sort), what sets Ballard apart from the golden age giants is his priorities: the science-fictional element (perhaps more appropriately in this case --and despite the pseudoscientific jargon-- the intruding magical element) is put to work as a metaphor for the internal lives of his protagonists. He's a bit heavyhanded about it -- there's a fair bit of tell-not-show contributing to that judgement, and I'd have to reread the novel carefully to be able to see whether I would have drawn the same conclusions if the protagonist hadn't quite explicitly pushed them at me. Still, the otherworldly element is in the service of character, rather than the characters serving to explore and report on the otherworldly element.

The novel has a pulpy feel in high contrast to Empire of the Sun. This isn't just the science fictional elements; the chief failings are a terribly wooden characterisation for almost all the supporting characters and a rather hard to swallow protagonist. This is perhaps why I'd characterise this as science fiction instead of magical realism; not that all science fiction has these failings, but I recommend The Crystal World despite its failings, for a very science-fictional reason: the idea is lovely. More, the idea and the way it's described is lovely.

If you can make that disconnect between literary content and imaginative content (a juggling act that is sadly often required to enjoy science fiction), you'll find The Crystal World rewarding. If the form matters too much to forgive some lapses of style, you're best avoiding it.
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LibraryThing member Leischen
Nicely done science fiction disater novel. A mysterious force is causing the world to be covered in crystal. Plants, inanimate objects, animals, men-- all being encased in a crystalline subject. Ballard's prose conveys the beauty of the crystalline world and the horror of the approaching end that
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it conveys.
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LibraryThing member KateSherrod
Flawed as this short little novel is, I weep that our ideal time for a cinematic adaptation of it is past, for I can think of no team who could do it justice as Peter Greenaway and Sacha Vierney could have, and they don't work together anymore. But their mastery of light in cinema, especially as
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demonstrated in Drowning By Numbers and A Zed and Two Noughts, could alone bring Ballard's exquisite vision to the screen.

And there, I would love to see it. And Greenaway could maybe pep up the story a little.

I mention this because the play of light on the surfaces of the slowly (and sometimes not-so-slowly) transforming surfaces of the jungles in The Crystal World is very, very important. Very. Description of same makes up the bulk of its verbiage. Ballard, perhaps mesmerized by the very idea of his creation, took great pains to share its every sparkly, shiny, spiny detail. As such, there is some seriously gorgeous prose to be had in this book, and thus much enjoyment, if that is your thing.

It's possibly the first book ever for which one wishes one had sunglasses for one's mind's eye.

Dazzling as the book is -- and not just visually; the scientific explanation for how and why this is happening, involving theories about sub-atomic particles and space-time that I do not feel adequate to explaining here, is also quite dazzling -- it's also one of the most melancholy reads I've encountered since, say The Road. For there are some people, including a band of lepers led by the protagonist's ex-lover, want to be crystallized. To be crystallized is to have time, and thus the progress of the disease, stop; to be alive but to cease decaying. The fact that nothing else will ever happen to them again is just by the bye. Like the characters of Ballard's The Drowned World, most of this novel's cast comprises people half in love with death, or at least with the destruction of the human world and the seductive chance it offers them to be something else.

Combine this with yet another Conradian quest (Ballard must have had an even bigger boner for Conrad than your humble reviewer does), up an African river, seeking a long-lost companion who has gone nuts in the jungle, and you almost have a really great novel. But somehow, perhaps its the extreme disinterest Ballard, and thus this reader, has in the characters peopling his frosty landscapes, perhaps it's just the depressing nature of all of this beauty, paging through this slim little novel felt like more of a chore than a delight. I'd still recommend it to anyone who values imagination and perfect prose, but with the caveat that such joys come with a price, and in this case, it's story. Ah, me.
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LibraryThing member ragwaine
Weird. Felt like I was watching a movie, great visuals. Not sure I understood the total concept.
LibraryThing member john257hopper
Not taken with this one. An interesting central idea but for me poorly executed and the characters and their reactions seemed other worldly, not in an interesting way as in High Rise.
LibraryThing member malrubius
Stumbled across this after remembering that I enjoyed the Drowned World many years ago. This is excellent also, Great, flawed characters, vivid setting, excellent writing. Fast, fun, and thought-provoking.
LibraryThing member g33kgrrl
A lyrical, descriptive story about a changed world and the people who are drawn to it. A study of character and thoughtfulness.

Probably not recommended to be read in pieces on public transit.
LibraryThing member bmdenny
boring amd hard to get through.
LibraryThing member Mary_Overton
Without warning or meaning, the physical world begins to crystallize. Living material mineralizes into a hybrid state that is not life or death.
"... they all craned forward, staring at the line of jungle facing the white-framed buildings of the town. The long arc of trees hanging over the water
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seemed to drip and glitter with myriads of prisms, the trunks and branches sheathed by bars of yellow and carmine light that bled away across the surface of the water, as if the whole scene were being reproduced by some over-active Technicolor process. The entire length of the opposite shore glittered with this blurred kaleidoscope, the over lapping bands of color increasing the density of the vegetation, so that it was impossible to see more than a few feet between the front line of trunks.
"The sky was clear and motionless, the sunlight shining uninterruptedly upon this magnetic shore, but now and then a stir of wind crossed the water and the scene erupted into cascades of color that rippled away into the air around them. Then the coruscation subsided, and the images of the individual trees reappeared, each sheathed in its armor of light, foliage glowing as if loaded with deliquescing jewels." pg. 75-76

One action that can reverse this abnormal crystallization is to expose what has mineralized to actual gem-stones grown the geologically slow, natural way:
"Handfuls of looted stones were scattered across the pavement, ruby and emerald rings, topaz brooches and pendants, intermingled with countless smaller stones, ruby and emerald rings, topaz brooches and pendants, intermingled with countless smaller stones and industrial diamonds. The abandoned harvest glittered coldly in the moonlight.
"As he stood among the stones Sanders noticed that the crystal outgrowths from his shoes were dissolving, melting like icicles exposed to sudden heat. Pieces of the crust fell away and deliquesced, vanishing into air." pg 175

A mystery of the space-time continuum.
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LibraryThing member unclebob53703
This review from PeterCrump exactly captures how I feel about this book--and he rated it the same as me.
"A novel of imagery and metaphor rather than story or character. Ballard is on top hallucinogenic form, his somewhat passive protagonists adrift in an African jungle crystallizing mysteriously
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around them. The Ballard leitmotifs of entropy and decay are starkly present, but it's the feverish fecundity of the crystal world that takes centre-stage with its arresting images of psychedelic mineral-animal-human hybrids."
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1966

ISBN

9780586024195

Local notes

Significant water damage.
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