This is the foreword to the Greek edition of Ballard’s Miracles of Life, published by Oxy, November 2009.
In 2006 I interviewed Jim Ballard. I was nervous at the thought of matching wits with this towering figure but my anxiety was quickly banished, for he was a charming and generous conversationalist. Although taxed from the recent [...]

Originally published in RealTime magazine, September, 2009.
I began writing about Australian animation in 2003, but only by default. I was in the queues for the Melbourne International Film Festival waiting to see various short film programs, which is what I intended to review. I kept overhearing the names ‘Adam Elliot’ and ‘Harvie Krumpet’ in conversations [...]

Images by Michelle Lord, from Future Ruins (inspired by JG Ballard’s ‘The Ultimate City’), 2008.
‘Pulled apart by the elders, many of the sets revealed their internal wiring. The green and yellow circuitry, the blue capacitors and modulators, mingled with the bright berries of the firethorn, rival orders of a wayward nature merging again after [...]

One of the more enduring misconceptions surrounding the work of J.G. Ballard is that it operates in the classical dystopian narrative mode, [1] supposedly mining pessimism, repression and the negativity of a post-industrial age.

An artificial reef in the Red Sea, which features in the Landscape Futures section.
Originally published in Blueprint, 19 August 2009.
Los Angeles-based Geoff Manaugh has been described by fellow futurist writer Bruce Sterling as ‘the world’s greatest practitioner of “architecture fiction”’. His online ideas factory, BLDGBLOG, attracts descriptors like ‘promiscuous’ and ‘omnivorous’. His new, beautifully designed [...]

WWII monument on Peleliu. Photo: Simon Sellars.
Originally published in Dynasty, China Airlines’ inflight magazine, August 2009.
Deep in the North Pacific ocean, 800km east of the Philippines and over 3000km south of Tokyo, lies the Republic of Palau. You may know it from the Survivor TV show, which filmed two series here, making full use of [...]

Originally published on ballardian.com, 27 May 2009.
by SIMON SELLARS & STEVEN from MELB PSY
Soundwalk by MELANIE CHILIANIS; photography by Simon Sellars.

“The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that [...]

ABOVE: ‘London after the Rain’, by Ben Olszyna-Marzys. A film produced for Nic Clear’s Unit 15 course, ‘Crash: Architectures of the Near Future’.

Originally published on ballardian.com, 24 December 2008.
In recognition of the sophistication of Ballard’s architectural analysis, a raft of discourse has been produced in recent times from within both academic and pop-cultural realms. This [...]

‘Tohoku Dreaming’, originally published in Flightless, Footscray: Lonely Planet Publications, 2008.
The last job they gave me was book-ended by madness.
It began somewhere in the labyrinthine insanity of Tokyo. I was trying to sleep in a tiny apartment, sweat pouring off me in great sheets. I was on assignment for one of the major guidebook publishers [...]

Photo: Andrew Rowat. (More photos here.)
Originally published in Dwell, May 2008.
Aaron Roberts and Thomas Bailey, the young architects behind room11, teamed up to design a house for Aaron’s parents, fixing the structure into the topography of the site.
The Kingston House is deceptive. From the street only the property’s raised garage can be seen, tucked away [...]