The Crystal World

Owing more than a passing salute toward Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, J. G. Ballard's THE CRYSTAL WORLD also resembles a more obscure work by one David Lindsay, A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. Just as in Conrad's masterpiece, Ballard's complicated protagonist Dr. Edward Sanders must venture up a West African coastal river to discover not only his own fate, but the fate of the world. Once a devoted caregiver to lepers in a hospital in Fort Isabelle, Sanders goes to find two friends, Dr. Max Clair and his wife, Sanders' ex-lover and aide-de-camp at the leproserie, the lovely but dark Suzanne, living now at a jungle clinic in a remote outpost far upriver. He has received a strange letter from Suzanne in which she describes the great forest as "glistening like St. Sophia," herself as "becoming excessively Byzantine," and the native peoples as "walk[ing] through the dark forest with crowns of light on their heads." Understandably, Sanders is both intrigued and distressed--and, we soon decipher, still very much in love with Suzanne, or at least his memories of her. First Dr. Sanders, who appears to us as something considerably less than Burrough-esque but more than a mere clod, is forced to wait in the river station of Port Matarre for someone willing to take him further up the Matarre River to the almost mythical Mont Royal, where the Clairs may be found. Port Matarre is an exceedingly strange, purgatorial place, steeped in shadow, a place where, as Sanders remarks to a traveling priest, "The sun seems unable to make up its mind." Here he meets a young journalist, Louise Peret,who bares more than a passing resemblance to Suzanne Clair, although Louise is lighter of complexion, a somehow brighter version of her "somber twin" Suzanne Clair. This play of contrasts, of light and dark, good and evil, perfection and corruption, is maintained throughtout Ballard's work here. Sanders does finally locate a willing host to take himself and Louise Peret upriver to Mont Royal. There they find the military has been busy attempting to cordon off huge tracts of the forest in an attempt to slow the creeping transformation of it into a world of bright crystal-like encrustations, beautiful, we are made to understand, even beyond Ballard's brave and incessant attempts to describe. (This same phenomenon is being reported in other parts of the world, notably Miami, FL.) This veritable cancer of crystals proves too malignant for all the men and their science to withstand, and soon Ballard's story itself seems hopelessly trapped inside it. The claustrophobic quality here is palpable and disturbing. In the end, we are confronted with a fantastic vision of Sanders tramping through a jeweled nature, glittering in crystalline petrifaction, bearing a large wooden crucifix encrusted with crystal-solvent gemstones, which he desperately waves around like some mad Christian. Suzanne, having contracted some latent form of leprosy, has been lost to the forest, "frozen like an i

This is an interesting piece of literature, not quite a fantasy story, but not quite within the bounds of reality. The characters are normal people, the setting is a small town with nothing special about it, except that it is beside a jungle where jewels grow out of the ground like weeds, and as a tumor, overtake anyone or anything in their way. If you can find your way out, before becoming a frozen statue of gems, the crystals melt away as you cross an invisible threshold. It's mesmerizing, and out of this world. What I liked most, is that Ballard never offers an explanation for this garden of jewelry. The rather simple story takes our characters on adventures in and out of this jungle, where some move swiftly enough to make it through with only a thin layer of "frost" on their clothes, while others find themselves trapped, and eventually buried under a rising ocean of diamonds and sapphires. The prose is simply wonderful. Ballard is a master of language. It is a joy to find yourself tangled in the elegance of his wording, so simple and so fluid, yet as enchanting as the jewels of his strange, dreamlike jungle. If you are looking to read a story with a clear, structured plot, where event A leads to event B and is resolved by event C, then avoid this book. This does not build up to a climactic revelation, and the mystery is not solved by a dramatic courtroom confession. But if you're hoping to find yourself lost in another world, then imagine the possibilities of a place where you can fill your pockets with opals and rubies, and where lepers grow emerald limbs glazed with topaz! Definitely something I plan to read again. Mark McGinty is the author of "Elvis and the Blue Moon Conspiracy"

Even by the most basic definition of "science-fiction" this book barely makes the cut . . . it doesn't really take place in the future, doesn't feature new technology, doesn't try to rewrite the laws of physics, you can even understand it without a degree in higher mathematics. Ballard's always been too concerned with the psychological and what lies inside the human heart to be a real SF writer but in the end, it's the story itself that counts, whatever genre label you want to slap onto it. What makes this book so effective is the calm contrast of the utterly unfathomable with the completely normal. Dr Sanders receives a letter from friends in a part of Africa saying really weird stuff about everything turning to crystal . . . curious, he travels there and finds that there weren't speaking metaphorically . . . everything, trees and all, are slowly being converted to crystal, and there's mounting evidence that the rest of the world is going to soon follow suit. Against this backdrop Ballard lets Sanders attempt to make some sense of what's going on. The unwaveringly calm tone of the novel only accents the subtle creepiness of the whole affair and every time you think Ballard's run out of ways to describe crystals and jewels, he figures out yet another one. Symbolism and imagery run amok in this story, there's definitely some sort of quasi-religious (or at least good/evil) aspect to all the crystalization going on but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Which is another good thing about the book, unlike most SF writers Ballard doesn't take the conceit that everything we encounter in this Universe we can understand and while possible explanations for what's happening abound (most of which don't make any sense anyway) there's never a definitive reason given, so at the end of the book you're left with a lot of questions, but the good kind, the kind that make you think. Thus readers expecting neat and tidy endings are advised that will be disappointed if they go into this book with that sort of attitude. In the end it's Ballard's realistic tone set against fantastic events and his ability to draw the reader into his world and make it come alive (even while the world itself is fossilizing) that causes the book to linger in your mind. His haunting depiction of a crystal world won't be something you'll easily forget.

Responding to a cryptic letter from a former lover, Dr. Edward Sanders journeys into the African interior and discovers that, through a solar prodigy, an expanse of rain forest and all within it have begun to crystallize. As Sanders is drawn deeper into this mysterious experience he discovers the same dark human venality at work, played out against scenes of paradisal wonderment. As he did in Empire of the Sun, Ballard imagines a strange, new world; hidden just beneath and quite at variance with this one. The Crystal World is an eerily beautiful book. Richly imagined and written by one of the premier writers of our time. Read and enjoy.

Responding to a cryptic letter from a former lover, Dr. Edward Sanders journeys into the African interior and discovers that, through a solar prodigy, an expanse of rain forest and all within it have begun to crystallize. As Sanders is drawn deeper into this mysterious experience he discovers the same dark human venality at work, played out against scenes of paradisal wonderment. As he did in Empire of the Sun, Ballard imagines a strange, new world; hidden just beneath and quite at variance with this one The Crystal World is an eerily beautiful book. Richly imagined and written by one of the premier writers of our time. Read and enjoy.