This new book by locally based author and poet Paul Green channels the spirit of J G Ballard. It features seven stories, and three essays. Paul is a few years older than myself, but we share considerable cultural influences. These might be described rather simplistically as encompassing elements of sixties counter-culture, eighties cyberpunk and nineties ‘Mondo2000’ alternative tech-oriented culture, all subsumed in the nineties, by, I believe, Forbidden Planet bookshop in, then, New Oxford Street, under the banner ‘Slipstream’. Authors in this category, which spans fiction, non-fiction, and pseudo-fiction, include: William Burroughs, Noam Chomsky, Brian Aldiss, Timothy Leary, Iain Banks, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, William T Vollmann, Robert Anton Wilson, and even perhaps Erich von Daniken.

And, of course, Jim Ballard. Paul and I were both influenced by Ballard. This shows in much of Paul’s writing, but comes to the fore in this excellent new collection. One of the essays looks at some of the tropes that appear in Ballard’s work, through the lens of one of his early novels, The Wind From Nowhere. Paul thanks David Pringle, former editor of the great UK SF magazine Interzone, a worthy successor to New Worlds, for his feedback on the essay. In the early nineties I had read a piece on Pringle’s fascination with Ballard. Interzone ran a competition, which I entered, to ‘rewrite Alien as if novelised by Ballard instead of Alan Dean Foster’. I pitched my entry towards Pringle’s take on Ballard, coming, as I recall, second in the competition – my entry is buried in a box somewhere in the Interzone archives at Liverpool University. The winning entry was printed, it took a minor liberty, adding ‘…and directed by David Cronenberg’ and was very good.

PAUL COVERS THESE TOUCHSTONE TROPES WELL

Reading Paul’s stories reminded me of my own tribute to Ballardian obsessions. Few have captured his tone and ecology of ideas as well as Paul has. Some of the early stories of Eric Brown, in his The Time-lapsed Man come to mind.

Ballard was a bit of an existentialist. His leading, male, characters reflect this philosophy. His female characters are of his time; in my imagination they are often highly-strung and faded, clinging to an outmoded comfort-zone, looking perhaps a bit like Nanette Newman. They are usually living in suburbia, or post-apocalyptic hotels, amongst jaded middle-class professionals. There is often an eccentric public school antagonist. The time-space the main character occupies is as much the ‘inner space’ of the mind as it is the external environment, and the latter is often arguably an existential extrusion of that mind.

It is often assumed that Ballard’s childhood, interred by the Japanese in Shanghai during the war, followed by post-war London, and in later life suburbia in the form of Shepperton is the key to his mentality. No doubt there is more to it than that, but his memories of the camp and of the austerity of post-war England are I think central to the atmosphere of novels, such as The Drought, The Crystal World, and The Drowned World – perhaps, too, in some aspects of one of my favourite Ballard novels, Hello America. One way or another, deserts are the heart of his most elemental novels and stories. Paul covers these touchstone tropes well in his stories, and explicates them in his essay on ‘The Poetics of ‘Studio 5, The Stars’, which inhabits the ambience of the collection Vermilion Sands. One of my favourite shorts appears here, The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D.

A CLASSIC TAKE ON BALLARDIAN APOCALYPSE STORIES

Paul channels other threads in Ballard’s work, especially in his story Monaco, which has shades of Crash, The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race, though he doesn’t go so far out as the Ballard of The Atrocity Exhibition here.

I think my favourite stories here are The Final Analysis, The Seismic World, and Shadow People. The former inhabits an alternate reality where the UK has joined the war in Vietnam, and the Russians have also arrived there, Profumo is PM, and characters include Jim and his friend Christopher Evans, in Wimbledon instead of Shepperton, but in different roles to our world, and a very Jim-esque lead in David Carlson. Carlson works for a trade rag, ‘Plastic World’, whereas Ballard worked for the trade rag, ‘Chemistry and Industry’. Paul has placed a number of amusing parallels amongst his work here. Seismic World is a classic take on Ballardian apocalypse stories, especially, perhaps, The Wind from Nowhere. The latter story, Shadow People, I like because I find it redolent of classic paranoid kids’ TV such as Time-Slip, Quatermass, and Children of the Stones, as well as of Ballard himself. It may recycle 70s TV, but ‘hauntology’ and ‘psychogeography’ have rendered nostalgia for that era current once more.

Highly recommended.

Terminal Transmissions is available from Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE

Writers from Bexhill, Hastings and St Leonards fought off stiff international competition to pick up key prizes in Hastings Literary Festival’s 2019 competition, which featured short story, poetry and flash fiction categories.

Bexhill-based writer Paul Green took first place in the short story category. Hastings resident Roz Balp came second in the same category and was also third in flash fiction.

St Leonards-based writer Andrea Samuelson scooped second prize in flash fiction, with Hastings’ Antony Mair taking second place in the poetry competition.

Writers’ support and training organisation ‘New Writing South’ sponsored additional prizes for East Sussex-based writers. They awarded their short story prize and overall ‘New Writing South prize’ to Hastings filmmaker Glyn Carter. Andrea Samuelson won the NWS flash fiction prize and Antony Mair the NWS poetry prize.

There were 371 entries for Hastings LitFest’s three competitions from around the world, including the USA, South Africa and India and they were judged anonymously. The results were announced on 1st September, at the LitFest closing ceremony which was presided over by its patron, the St Leonards-born playwright, Sir David Hare.

Commenting on Paul Green’s winning science fiction short story ‘Zoe in a Trance of Terror’, judge Tabby Stirling said: “This story hasn’t left me – from the second paragraph I wanted it to be a novel. I became so immersed in this writer’s world.”

Paul, from Bexhill, has published four novels as well as several poetry collections and his plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, CBC Canada, Capital Radio, RTE Ireland and Resonance FM and performed by New Theatre Works and Travesty Theatre.

He says:  “It’s great to have this recognition of my work, which has encouraged me to develop the story into a new novel.”

Lesley Wood, chief executive of ‘New Writing South’, said: “We’re very proud to support this truly international competition at a time when it’s particularly important for individual voices to be heard.” 

Glyn Carter, winner of the NWS Prize, left his steady job working for Hastings Borough Council in 2014 to start making films, since when he’s made eleven shorts, and won several awards and festival selections. Liminal, his NWS prize-winner, is the first of Glyn’s stories to win a competition. 

He said: “It’s wonderful to be recognised. I’ve written screenplays, but with fiction you’re responsible for everything a director or actor would do in film, like atmosphere, pacing, and characters’ thoughts and emotions. Since I’m so new to writing prose fiction, it’s great to hear that I’m doing something right!”

Roz Balp has lived in Hastings for over 30 years and writes mainly short stories and poetry. In 2017 she won the National Association of Writers’ Groups’ poetry competition. She was placed second in the LitFest short story competition for ‘Faniel’ and third in flash fiction for ‘Look at the Lights’.

Antony Mair, who lives in Hastings, has been writing poetry since he was a teenager. Since retiring from the legal profession, he has gone from strength to strength. His debut collection Bestiary, and Other Animals was shortlisted for the 2017 Live Canon First Collection Prize. Antony founded and runs the Hastings Stanza poetry group, which is affiliated to the Poetry Society. He was placed second in the LitFest poetry competition and won the NWS poetry prize for ‘Baudelaire in a Hastings Corner Shop’.

Andrea Samuelson, who lives in St Leonards, is the author of Cradle Song, a book of poems about her great-grandmother’s incarceration in a mental asylum and her own hospitalisation for post-natal depression. Her poetry has been published in the Rialto and her short fiction has been published in Mslexia, Front and Centre and QWF. She won the Peterloo Poetry prize in 2009. She was placed second in the LitFest flash fiction competition and won the New Writing South flash fiction prize for Dwelling. 

• The first Hastings LitFest Anthology, a compilation of competition entries selected by Hastings LitFest 2019 judges Tabatha Stirling, John McCullough and Michael Loveday, will be on sale soon priced £7.99.

• Hastings Literary Festival began in 2018 and is supported by the Arts Council England and other sponsors.