Signed by Ballard
BALLARD, J.G. Vermilion Sands. London:Jonathan Cape.1973.
8vo. Original light blue cloth with title lettering in gilt, Pictorial wraparound dust jacket by Brian Knight, pp. [xi], 208, fine.
First edition with authors signature to title page
Vermilion Sands is described as a 'latter day Palm Springs', home to a cohort of forgotten film stars and lost bohemians. Here is a place where the automated has successfully crushed human creativity; 'dial-a-poem computers' have usurped the poet, a prediction of our contemporary dependancies on the virtual. As the burb states, it is "a lair for…hangers-on and malignant obsessions- a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotestque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias…". It is a place where the nightmare is intensified by the horrifying and unforgiving landscape that Ballard is so notorious for creating.
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