SOURCE: Stephenson, Gregory. “The Dimension of the Disaster: The Early Short Fiction.” In Out of the Night and Into the Dream: A Thematic Study of the Fiction of J. G. Ballard, pp. 13-40. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Stephenson scrutinizes the metaphysical themes of Ballard's early short stories.

J. G. Ballard's first published story, “The Violent Noon,”¹ appeared in the Varsity (Cambridge) in 1951, sharing the magazine's first prize of ten pounds for its Crime Story Competition. Although it is not, strictly speaking, a piece of juvenilia—the author was twenty-one years old at the time of writing—“The Violent Noon” is obviously an early effort, an apprentice piece, lacking the facility and skill of Ballard's more mature work. Nevertheless, the story does display ability and it is of interest for its suggestion of the young author's concerns and for its prefiguration of motifs that are...