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Idewild are a solid band who have released four or five albums that I could consider for this series. I’m even in the sleeve credits of one: Post-Electric Blues, if you’re asking.

Since the run there has been a bit of a hiatus in this blog. I wrote about how running was making me feel better. In fact, I should have said more. I recently stopped taking the antidepressants that I had been taking for eighteen months. This has been my longest period taking such medication but the running made me feel sufficiently good to decide that I could stop taking them.

So, Saturday. Finally. The big day. Would I a) be able to get to Greenwich in time for the registration? and b) be able to make it all the way around the course without collapsing and crying?

At last, Ballard in full flow. The Crystal World (TCW) is definitely the most enjoyable of the early trio of apocalyptic novels. It takes the successful elements of the first two and embellishes them with new details and ideas. At time of writing, TCW is definitely the best Ballard novel that I have read in its entirety.

I bought this album in the summer between my two years at college. I remember listening to this music under skies glowering with clouds so 1997 must have been a poor summer. I’d just bought a book of photography too, which placed photos from the north and south poles on opposite pages. I bought it mainly for the penguins that were, of course, on pretty much every other page. The pictures of snow and ice soon became the ideal companions to this album.

On to The Drought by J. G. Ballard in my ongoing quest to read and review all of his novels. This is his second novel, if we assume his convention of never acknowledging “The Wind From Nowhere” as being his first novel. “The Drought” itself was renamed from “The Burning World” and additional content added later on. This was quite common practice in SF in the 50s and 60s where novels were serialised in magazines like Amazing SF and Interzone. It is evidence though of Ballard finding his voice as he wrote and from The Drought it is easy to see that he is iterating his thought processes and subject matter with each novel.

“The Drought” is marvellous in a way that “The Drowned World” is not. Here Ballard has cut away much of the ropy science of that novel and left us with a much more realistic scenario of global drought without having to worry about all the outré trappings of giant iguanas and dragonflies the size of your head. Instead, all the magnetic and mesmerising elements of Ballard’s work are beginning to take form: the eccentric recluse with possible sinister intent, the confused and detached protagonist, the ambivalently regarded woman of standing, the encroachment of nature and the human tendency to defile pretty much all it touches, including all that it has constructed and lived alongside.

The next entry in the understated classics series is “The Circle & The Square” by Red Box.