Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2011 May 18 • Wednesday

J. G. Ballard wasn't proud of this first novel. Pick up any Ballard book and look at the list of titles by the same author. The Wind from Nowhere won't be there. The earliest book will be his second novel, The Drowned World.

While working my way through The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, which presents his published short stories in chronological order, I thought it might be worth reading his novels chronologically at the same time. When the phrase "the drowned world" appeared in a story published a year or so before the novel of that name, I was persuaded.

So after reading a few stories from 1962, I took a break to read The Wind from Nowhere, also ©1962. I liked it. I suppose it's pulpier than most of Ballard's books and has a greater emphasis on action, but it doesn't seem like a embarrassment to me.

The book is divided into eight chapters with intriguing names: "The Coming of the Dust", "From the Submarine Pens", "Vortex over London", "The Corridors of Pain", "The Scavengers", "Death in a Bunker", "The Gateways of the Whirlwind" and "The Tower of Hardoon".

The first line is "The dust came first".

The idea is that wind is blowing constantly around the world. As one character explains, "'it's almost as if a complete shell of solid air, with its axis at the poles, were revolving around the globe. There may be one or two minor variations where local prevailing winds overlay the global system, but its direction is constantly westward'".

The wind never stops or subsides, even for a second, and it's gradually increasing in force at the rate of five miles a day.

At first people take shelter and wait for it to stop. Forced out of their basements or other shelters by hunger or flooding or some other cause, people are plucked by the wind and sent flying half a mile in ten seconds. And it gets much worse.

Ballard is at his best describing the scenes of devastation caused by the wind.

Directly below in the street, a hundred feet away from them, was the entrance to the Hammersmith Underground. The tall office buildings in the street were down to their first stories, walls poking up through piles of rubble, but the entrance to the station had been fortified with a heavy concrete breastwork that jutted out into the roadway, three circular doors fitted into its domed roof.

These were open now, and emerging from them was a press of struggling people, fighting and pulling past each other in a frantic effort to escape from the station. The doorways were packed with them, some peering out hesitantly when they reached the entrance, then being propelled out into the open street by the pressure of the mob behind them.

Like petals torn from a wind-blown flower they detached themselves from the doorways, took a few helpless steps out into the street and were whipped off their feet and hurled across the road, bouncing head over heels like sacks of feathers that burst and disintegrated as they ripped into the ragged teeth of reinforcing bars protruding from the debris.

While all this is going on, a wealthy industrialist named Hardoon has assembled a private army and hordes of food, weapons and other supplies. He's also gone to the trouble of building a massive pyramid. At first he seems like the kind of villain James Bond encounters in movies, but his plan is unusual and unexpected.

Maitland pressed on. "What are you hoping to gain? Supreme political control when the wind subsides?"

Hardoon turned and stared at Maitland, an expression of incredulity on his face.

"Is that what occurs to you, Doctor? You can think of no other motive?"

Maitland shrugged, somewhat taken aback by Hardoon's reaction. "Your own immediate survival, of course. With the backing of a large, well-run organization."

Hardoon smiled bleakly. "It's astonishing, how the weak always judge the strong by their own limited standards."

You'll have to read the book yourself to find out what he's up to!