The burning world
By JG Ballard
Original edition: Berkley Medallion, January 1964, 160 pages.
Republished in various print and e-book editions.
JG Ballard, a key figure in late 20th century science fiction, began his career in the early 1960s with three novels exploring various climate change scenarios. The first of these novels, The wind from nowhere (1961) is a conventional disaster novel about a devastating global storm. The second, The drowned world (1962) subverts this formula by presenting a hero who accepts and even embraces catastrophe—in this case, an Earth transformed by rising sea levels and a return to a primordial greenhouse climate. The burning worldwhich celebrated its 60th anniversary earlier this year, continues this subversion with characters who strangely revel in the desolation of a parched, rainless Earth.
This theme of delight in devastation is vividly portrayed early on. Consider how our protagonist, Dr. Charles Ransom, marvels at the gradual drying up of the great lake in the fictional town of Hamilton: “The slow transformation of the lake intoxicated Ransom. As the broad expanses of water contracted, first into shallow lagoons and then into a labyrinth of streams, the wet dunes of the lakebed seemed to emerge from another dimension.” A little later, Quilter, the town’s villain, grins perversely at the macabre sight of countless dead birds, victims of the disappearance of the fish that once fed them.
As the story begins, the planet has not seen rain in months. Half a century of unchecked human pollution has caused a tiny but impermeable film to form on the ocean’s surface, preventing rain from forming. Geoengineering efforts such as cloud seeding have produced neither rain nor clouds. The resulting water crisis has driven civilization to ruin: communities of every size, from major cities to small towns, have splintered into isolated factions, all desperately vying for dwindling water reserves. Once fertile lands have become barren wastelands, abandoned infrastructure lies in ruins, and fires rage uncontrollably across the land.
The novel’s cast is diverse and sharply drawn. Ransom is an aimless man, estranged from his wife, preparing to leave his failing medical practice and dwindling congregation to seek solace by the sea. Quilter is a mentally disabled young man with a devious streak. Then there is Richard Lomax, a former architect known for his white silk suit, unctuous charm, and constant efforts to exploit resource scarcity for personal gain, along with Quilter. Other characters include a feisty minister whose congregation has largely abandoned him, a charter boat operator who, out of habit, continues his trips down the river despite having no passengers, and a woman who cares for the animals at the nearby zoo and struggles to provide for them in a world where even humans can barely survive.
The novel’s plot functions as a journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape, following Ransom and several others as they move from Hamilton to a burning nearby town, coastal shantytowns, and a settlement ruled by despots. The group travels in an abandoned car, shelters huts made of discarded scrap metal, and subsists on dried seaweed and smoked herring. On the coast, Random builds a freshwater still and a makeshift aquaponics pool using seaweed and sea anemones. Although they separated at the beginning of the novel, Ransom and his wife live together again out of necessity. Eventually, they tire of their animal-like existence and reluctantly seek a new life as serfs in a newly established feudal community.
The novel deftly explores the tension between environmentalism and human progress without being didactic. Only a few times are the environmental themes explicitly addressed. One of these is a scene in which Ransom casually mentions “the balance of nature,” to which Lomax replies that without the willingness of people like him to bend nature to humanity’s will, “we’d all be living in mud huts.” There is also a moment when Ransom reflects on how the film on the ocean surface seems to be nature’s revenge on humanity: “This act of retribution by the sea had always impressed Ransom with its simple justice.” Such direct messages are rare, however; for the most part, the environmental themes unfold subtly through descriptive imagery and narrative development.
As is often the case in Ballard’s work, this novel combines a physical journey with a deeper, metaphysical one, with the characters’ inner lives reflecting the changes in the outside world. As the water disappears, so do the “memories and stale feelings” once dear to our travelers. Much like the legendary Philip K. Dick, Ballard was a pioneer in pushing science fiction into the realm of the inner space of the human psyche.
Despite all the desolation, The burning world offers a more hopeful outlook on the future of humanity than The drowned worldWhile the latter leaves no room for hope that human extinction can be averted, the former suggests the possibility of recovery and renewal for humanity.
Nevertheless, I prefer Drowned. I find it to be imbued with a great sense of science fiction wonder—which comes from the prospect of the Earth returning to a mysterious time before the dinosaurs, where pelycosaurs roam, inland seas abound, and ferns tower 300 feet high—that is entirely absent from this book, in which nature simply withers away, leaving behind dry, barren earth. In short, I prefer the surreal grandiosity of Drowned to the sparse down-to-earthness combustion– and the idea of a new prehistoric Earth, free of humans, to a biologically impoverished Earth where humans reign supreme. But that’s just my opinion.
