SOURCE: “J. G. Ballard: Time out of Mind,” in Extrapolation, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring, 1994, pp. 43–59.

In the following essay, Brigg examines Ballard's preoccupation with time in “The Voices of Time,” The Crystal World, Hello America, and “News from the Sun.” Brigg contends that these works exemplify Ballard's conception of time as a subjective, man-made perception of the external world—rather than an absolute measure of reality—in which his characters explore the inner space between universal and personal time.

… instead of treating time like a sort of glorified scenic railway, I'd like to see it used for what it is, one of the perspectives of the personality, and the elaboration of concepts such as the time zone, deep time and archaeopsychic time.

—J. G. Ballard, “Which Way to Inner Space”

The full implications of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' discovery of human subjectivity are only now beginning to unfurl...