The Terminal Press' second anthology of Ballard ephemerae, Deep Ends: The J. G. Ballard Anthology 2014, is a beautiful collection of interviews, essays, and art from an eclectic gathering of authorities on Ballard.
Editor Rick McGrath provides a brief account of the impetus for both this project and The Terminal Press' earlier The J. G. Ballard Book in his overview, "Ends Game," crediting much to the contributions of Mike Holliday and James Goddard, respectively.
Baxter (Anglia Ruskin U., UK) presents eight essays of contemporary literary criticism of the fiction of British writer
J. G. Ballard. Topics include the implications of time, space, and psychology in Ballard's early fiction; the influence of Surrealism on The Atrocity Exhibition; Crash as a site of Gothic horror and humor; Ballard's cinematic imagination and the film adaptations of The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and Empire of the Sun; Ballard's literary renderings of his own life; the shifting significance of the city of London across Ballard's career; Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes as nightmare utopias and Ballard's response to the shifting landscapes of postwar Europe; and representations of violence, sacrifice, and community in Ballard's postmillennial fictions.
This reader of critical essays on J. G. Ballard is the first installment of Continuum's Contemporary Critical Perspectives series, which has since tackled the writing of Ian McEwan (2009), with a volume on Kazuo Ishiguro (2010).
Baxter's introduction, "J. G. Ballard and the Contemporary," is preceded by a short chronology identifying publication dates and key moments in Ballard's personal and professional life.