Applied Ballardianism: Memoir From a Parallel Universe

Fleeing the excesses of ’90s cyberculture, a young researcher sets out to systematically analyse the obsessive themes of a writer who prophesied our disorienting future: cult author J.G. Ballard, voluptuary of the car crash, surgeon of the pathological virtualities pulsing beneath reality's surface.Defeated by obsessive fears and the stultifying tedium of academia, yet certain that everything connects to Ballard, his thesis collapses into a series of delirious travelogues, deranged speculations and tormented meditations on time, memory, and loss. Renouncing all scholarly distance, he finally accepts the deep assignment that has plagued him throughout his life and embarks on a rogue fieldwork project: Applied Ballardianism.Only the darkest impulses and the most apocalyptic paranoia can uncover the technological mutations of inner space...