SOURCE: “Images from the Disaster Area: An Apocalyptic Reading of Urban Landscapes in Ballard's The Drowned World and Hello America,” in Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, March, 1994, pp. 81–97.

In the following essay, Rossi provides comparative analysis of The Drowned World and Hello America, focusing on Ballard's portrayal of post-apocalyptic London, New York, and Las Vegas as physical and metaphorical “Dead Cities,” and the interplay of historical and trans-historical themes in the texts.

J. G. Ballard has dealt at least twice with the apocalyptic¹ image of the Dead City. This somewhat disturbing landscape is the background of his novels The Drowned World and Hello America. The two mark different points on the axis of time—namely, 1962 and 1979, respectively—cutting a segment on the line of Ballard's evolution as a writer, but also defining a period of literary history during which many significant events took place, both inside and outside SF...