![]() ![]() But while Ballard’s characters have always been cold and glassy, they’re absurd here. In terms of creeping psychological horror, these spreading dreams-everyone dreams of the same apocalyptic landscape-are appropriately skin-crawling. ![]() Kerans, and his team are exploring a flooded city and afflicted by nightmares. The heat is oppressive and the few people left live on the poles. The world has returned to its prehistoric settings with massive jungles, gigantic lizards, and swarms of bugs. The Drowned World takes place in 2145, after the ice caps have melted and flooded Earth. In the past, I’ve admired that Ballard writes stories that work on multiple levels, but The Drowned World is primarily a riff on Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. They’re buried under so much allegory that they lack surface-level believability or function. The writing is spectacular, but the characters are too flat for my taste. Ballard’s High-Rise and Concrete Island are both creepily brilliant, but The Drowned World doesn’t meet their high bar. ![]()
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