MEMORIES OF THE SPACE AGE by...

MEMORIES OF THE SPACE AGE by J. G. Ballard (Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wis. 53583: $16.95)

Where most of us see the Apollo moon landing as the supreme triumph of the space age, as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” J. G. Ballard believes that it is technology, not mankind, that is leaping ahead, and finds it highly doubtful that man has any clue of how and where to direct it. A dissident science fiction writer, Ballard creates characters who realize over time that rockets are missiles and that technology is not a force that automatically allies with the good.

While in many of these short stories, written from 1962-85, Ballard’s characters seem to change their attitude too suddenly--staunch advocates of science abruptly become hollow men--the stories are remarkable for their clever narratives and telling, mystical images. In the 1962 story, “The Cage of Sand,” for example, a city intended to display the wonders of the space age becomes eroded by contaminated sand and poisoned by “a cyanide-blue sky.” The tale seems prescient, for when a cage is built around the city to contain the damage, one thinks of Chernobyl. Another piece, “The Man on the Moon,” eloquently depicts the isolation engendered by manly dreams of conquest, as an impoverished, disheveled man plays to the tourist trade by claiming to have been an astronaut; eventually, he comes to believe his own story. “What was being on the moon literally like?” the story’s narrator asks the astronaut, whose “tired gaze inspected the narrow street of cheap jewelry stores.” “It was just like being here,” the astronaut replies.

While these conclusions might seem dark, Ballard’s protagonists are not in fact defeated, for Ballard sees an element of triumph in their admission of powerlessness. This is most apparent in his brilliant story “News From the Sun,” which chronicles how an establishment scientist learns to accept “fugues,” strange lapses of consciousness and transitions into dream states. At first, the scientist fights the reveries--surrounding himself with alarm clocks, for instance--but soon he gives in, realizing the deceptiveness of time itself: “For prehistoric man the invention of time . . . was a way of classifying and storing the huge flood of events which his dawning mind had opened for him. Like a dog burying a large bone, the invention of time allowed him to postpone the recognition of an event-system too large for him to grasp at one bite.”