Vermilion Sands

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vermillion Sands
First Italian edition of the collection
Author	J. G. Ballard
Country	UK
Language	English
Genre(s)	fiction
Publisher	Jonathon Cape
Publication date	1971

Vermilion Sands is a short-story collection by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1971. All the stories are set in an imaginary vacation resort called Vermilion Sands which suggests, among other places, Palm Springs in southern California. The characters are generally the wealthy and disaffected, or people who make a living off them, and parasites of various kinds.

In the preface, Ballard himself wrote: "Vermilion Sands has more than its full share of dreams and illusions, fears and fantasies, but the frame for them is less confining. I like to think, too, that it celebrates the neglected virtues of the glossy, lurid and bizarre."

Contents 1 The collection 1.1 Stories 1.2 Exotic technology 2 Popular culture references 3 External links

[edit] The collection

[edit] Stories

Vermilion Sands contains the following stories:

• "Prima Belladonna" (1956)
• "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista" (1962)
• "Cry Hope, Cry Fury!" (1966)
• "Venus Smiles" (1957)
• "Studio 5, The Stars" (1961)
• "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" (1967)
• "Say Goodbye to the Wind" (1970)
• "The Screen Game" (1962)
• "The Singing Statues" (1962)

[edit] Exotic technology

Each story concentrates on different media - in some cases more than one - and most of them focus on a particular innovative, usually rather decadent/baroque twist on an existing artistic medium. For instance:

• "Prima Belladonna" focuses on music, especially singing, via singing plants and a 'mutant' voice;
• "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista" focuses on architecture, via mobile, mood-sensitive houses;
• "Cry Hope, Cry Fury" focuses on painting, through paints that respond to the presence of light/objects (an example of decadence through the evaporation of skill);
• "Venus Smiles" focuses on sculpture, through the creation of a (strangely growing) sound sculpture;
• "Studio 5, The Stars" focuses on poetry, through automated poetry machines (another example of skill vanishing, this time into automation);
• "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" focuses on a peculiar kind of sculpture made by carving clouds - painting also appears in this one;
• "Say Goodbye to the Wind" focuses on fashion via living fashion and sound jewelry (non-aural music and erotic food are also mentioned in passing);
• "The Screen Game" has no unusual technologies, but an unusual aesthetic - jewels and screens dominate;
• "The Singing Statues" returns to sound sculpture (which is probably why it was removed from the American Berkley Medallion edition of 1971, as the story conflicts with the plot of "Venus Smiles").

Although the characters themselves often exhibit the same obsession, anomie and psychological disintegration typical of Ballard's characters, the emphasis on elaborate and sometimes humorously imagined art forms gives these stories a playfulness unusual in his other stories. A few other stories not set in Vermilion Sands are comparable because of their similar artistic games, especially "Sound-Sweep" (1960, on music/opera) and "Passport to Eternity" (1962, full of decadent trends and live fashions).

[edit] Popular culture references

• The song "Vermillion Sands" on the Buggles album Adventures In Modern Recording is probably referring to this collection.

[edit] External links

• The Terminal Collection: JG Ballard First Editions

v • d • e Works by J. G. Ballard Novels: The Wind From Nowhere (1961) • The Drowned World (1962) • The Burning World (1964) • The Crystal World (1966) • The Atrocity Exhibition (1969) • Crash (1973) • Concrete Island (1974) • High Rise (1975) • The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) • Hello America (1981) • Empire of the Sun (1984) • The Day of Creation (1987) • Running Wild (1988) • The Kindness of Women (1991) • Rushing to Paradise (1994) • Cocaine Nights (1996) • Super-Cannes (2000) • Millennium People (2003) • Kingdom Come (2006) Short stories: "The Voices of Time" (1960) • "The Recognition" (1967) • "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) Short story collections: The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962) • Billennium (1962) • Passport to Eternity (1963) • The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1963) • The Terminal Beach (1964) • The Impossible Man (1966) • The Venus Hunters (1967) • The Overloaded Man (1967) • The Disaster Area (1967) • The Day of Forever (1967) • Vermilion Sands (1971) • Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971) • Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories (1976) • The Best of J. G. Ballard (1977) • The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (1978) • Myths of the Near Future (1982) • The Voices of Time (1985) • Memories of the Space Age (1988) • War Fever (1990) • The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (2001) Essays & reviews A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996) • Miracles of Life (2008)