Mike Bonsall

@mbonsall.bsky.social

706 Followers 1259 Following

Ballardian | digitizer | concordancer | code art https://fentonville.co.uk/digital-ballard/

photo of thermometer reading 33.6 centigrade and 38% humidity above cover of JG Ballard's The Drowned World. Another photo of first page of the book held open by a hand-held fan. The text reads: ON THE BEACH AT THE RITZ Soon it would be too hot. Looking out from the hotel balcony shortly after eight o'clock, Kerans watched the sun rise behind the dense groves of giant gymnosperms crowding over the roofs of the abandoned department stores four hundred yards away on the east side of the lagoon. Even through the massive olive-green fronds the relentless power of the sun was plainly tangible. The blunt refracted rays drummed against his bare chest and shoulders, drawing out the first sweat, and he put on a pair of heavy sunglasses to protect his eyes. The solar disc was no longer a well-defined sphere, but a wide expanding ellipse that fanned out across the eastern horizon like a colossal fire-ball, its reflection turning the dead leaden surface of the lagoon into a brilliant copper shield. By noon, less than four hours away, the water would seem to burn.
cover of conference programme for Terminal Futures: JG Ballard in the 21st century held at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, 15th - 17th May 2026. Also, a photograph of keynote by Prof. Caroline Edwards, Birkbeck, University of London, titled: Hopeful Inhumanism - The Ruined Worlds of JG Ballard
How not to read JG Ballard This new biography has done a great writer a disservice By Edmund Gordon Illustration by Iddo Goldfarb ... The Illuminated Man, written with the cooperation of Ballard’s daughters (though evidently without the involvement of his son James, with whom he had a difficult relationship), easily clears the low bar set by Baxter. Nonetheless, it’s a decidedly eccentric and often frustrating piece of work. ... By far the biggest surprise afforded by The Illuminated Man is how much of it is concerned less with Ballard than with Priest. ... There are moments when Priest seems to view his ostensible subject mainly as a proxy for writing about his own attitudes and beliefs. He paraphrases Ballard’s description of his discovery of science fiction, before providing a gloss ... Some of Priest’s claims are hard to comprehend. “Ballard’s motives for becoming a writer were no different from” those of John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. “Crash is perhaps the least ‘Ballardian’ book he wrote.” “Ballard’s stories and novels were to say the least misunderstood in America: he was often described or labelled as an avant-garde writer.” The last of these is particularly baffling. Is Priest really contending that it’s wrong to view a book such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), with its radical cut-up technique and protagonist whose name changes with every chapter, as belonging to the avant-garde? If so, his co-author seems to disagree with him. Allan tells us that in the late 1960s, when the episodes of The Atrocity Exhibition were first appearing in magazines, Priest “found himself out of sympathy with Ballard’s move towards the avant-garde”. It’s a clarifying remark: Priest has given us a Ballard purged of any qualities with which he doesn’t identify. The man who’s most powerfully illuminated by this curious book isn’t the one whose name is in the title.
poster for book event at Argonaut Books, Edinburgh, 7pm 7th May 2026 with author Nina Allan publicising The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of JG Ballard
an Uber Eats food delivery robot stranded outside block of flats that used to be the Coach and Horses pub in Sheffield UK
screenshot of review of biography of JG Ballard The Illuminated Man, with headline "He is beyond psychiatric help" -- the traumatic origins of JG Ballard. Illustrated with collage of Ballard portrait and still from the film Empire of the Sun, with Christian Bale playing schoolboy 'Jim Ballard' in war-torn Shanghai
screenshot of Times Literary Supplement. Title: Labour of Love, a biography of J. G. Ballard becomes a much more personal project, by Norma Clarke. Photo of Ballard at his writing desk looking serious
It may seem naïve to suggest that the visitors to Epstein’s island committed a range of criminal or near-criminal acts simply because they were bored. But Ballard does pose some fundamental questions about the nature of lives where work is everything, from waking to sleeping every day of the year. How do such people find personal fulfilment or cultivate a sense of morality? When you can pay someone else to manage almost every aspect of your life, what is there left for yourself? What is life for? Historically, the elite institutions of the Global North – universities, churches, and the high temples of literature and arts – encouraged their members to seek answers to these questions. In the modern world their influence has waned as elites have become more open and disruption valued as an end in itself. Contemporary universities transmit skills rather than morals. Civic republicanism has yielded to MAGA, among the rich as much as among their foot soldiers. Epstein’s island may be less a pathology than a dystopian vision of a future that may be hard to resist. photo of Robert Dingwall Robert Dingwall is an emeritus professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University. He also serves as a consulting sociologist, providing research and advisory services particularly in relation to organizational strategy, public engagement and knowledge transfer. He is co-editor of the SAGE Handbook of Research Management.
screenshot of my digital mini-game made from J G Ballard's short story 'Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown'. Players must drag and drop words from top of screen into the target area in the right order to reveal the original short story one paragraph at a time. If you want to cheat, the correct order is: A discharged Broadmoor patient compiles Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown, recalling his wife's murder, his trial and exoneration.
a room-sized cold war bunker, seen from the side and exposed by collapse of cliff into the sea, is about to fall away. Inset is a photo of two local historians who have studied it.
A Ballardian Xmas eCard featuring the head of a crash test dummy looking straight out of the image and wearing a Santa hat. The background is a road research lab. The words HO HO HO are made out of tyre tracks and tyres.
cover art for the literary biography of JG Ballard, titled: The Illuminated Man - Life, Death and the Worlds of JG Ballard. Illustration is collage of Ballard standing, looking at an open book. Behind him are a car and high rise building, blue background and suggestions of clouds.
To: H. R. Haldeman From: Bill Safire July 18, 1969. IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two 1nen are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations . In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
I enjoyed working with Jim Ballard, then embarking on his powerful visions of drowning and drought-stricken worlds – science fiction but in its own special category. He was an original, a charmer with a streak of melancholy and a magnificently weird imagination, his visions all his own. He told me about his childhood in a Japanese prison camp after the fall of Shanghai, and I urged him to write about it, but he had more volumes of science fiction to deliver before he would take on that task. And in 1964 he came into the office after his summer holidays and told me, simply, even abruptly, that his wife had died of pneumonia in Spain. I could hardly believe the fact or his contained response to such a sudden tragedy. He was left with three children - the eldest eight years old – whom he brought up beautifully; I remember how impressed I was when he brought them over to lunch with me at home. The Crystal World came out in 1966, and we went on working together. He had old-fashioned manners - he once presented me with an orchid - and I always enjoyed our meetings. But as the years went by both of us left Cape and we lost touch. I was amazed and very happy when in 1984 he finally published The Empire of the Sun, read it with admiration, delighted in its success and saw him again to tell him how pleased I was. It is a slightly fictionalized memoir, told with pinpoint clarity so that the slightest details imprint themselves on your imagination as you read. It won prizes, as it deserved to, and was filmed. His writing career continued, always surprising, disconcerting, effective, sometimes shocking, and, although I could not follow him into the psychosexuality of car crashes or technologically mediated masochism, I always liked him.
Two reviews of Ballardian Diversions by Mike Bonsall. Michelle Schusterman (@MSchustAuthor) says: A brilliant, obsessive dive into the surreal and cerebral world of J.G. Ballard -- part art project, part thought experiment, all delightfully deranged. Kid Narco (@kidnarco.bsky.social) says: This is rather delightful. The work of a true obsessive, playful and self-aware. Ballard would have very politely backed away slowly.
Flier for the Sapiens project, offering payment of £40 to have your face scanned "to help diversify gaming's digital faces". Must be clean shaven and without makeup or piercings. Part of Ten24's "mission to create a more inclusive digital future by scanning real people across Sheffield. Your face could help shape virtual characters in games, healthcare, robotics, and more."
Five copies of the hardback edition of Ballardian Diversions by Mike Bonsall, showing author photo on back cover
Publisher's advert for Mike Bonsall's Ballardian Diversions, Maxim Jakubowski's Cruising the Coast of Nostalgia, and Paul A Green's Terminal Transmissions. Buy 3 hardcovers for £40, softcovers £28; any 2 for £30 hardcover, softcovers £20; 1 hardcover £15, softcover £10. email rickmcgrath @ shaw dot ca
Fay Ballard graphite on paper drawing, 40 x 31 cm, 2015. Showing view of JG Ballard's study window, with masking tape over one pane and opening mechanism. Visible through window is lush vegetation
Inspired by The Last of Us, some AI images imagining famous Sheffield buildings and landmarks slowly being reclaimed by nature — crumbling, overgrown, abandoned… but still unmistakably ours. From the city centre to the suburbs — here’s what a post-apocalyptic Sheffield might look like. In this example, a Supertram covered by and surrounded with weeds, permanently stopped at the deserted Cathedral
cover of Ballardian Diversions by Mike Bonsall showing painting of 1920's British biplane. Back cover has author photo and text: After unsuccessfully studying psychology, medicine, art and information systems, Mike Bonsall finally gave in to his obsession with the work of JG Ballard, whose writing seems to hint at another world, just out of sight, that might somehow be reached by an ever-more intense interrogation of the text. After all, he reasoned, Ballard himself encouraged this experimental approach: "It's a little as if I were leading the reader to a deserted laboratory, and that I put a collection of specimens and all the necessary equipment at his disposal. It's his job then to relate these elements together and create reactions from them." This volume contains some of the more interesting results of his experiments.
CARTANO/JAKUBOWSKI: Fascinated as you are by modern technologies, have you never thought of living in the United States? BALLARD: Before going to China with my parents, I spent six months in Canada, I went to Detroit, Buffalo, the Niagara falls.1 What’s more, the Shanghai I knew was entirely within the sphere of American influence: the cars, the merchandise, Coca-Cola, air conditioning, the radio stations, the comics, the lifestyle, it was all American. Today, I’d very much like to go to the United States, but up to now I haven’t had the opportunity. You know, I’ve had to bring up my three children, and that doesn’t make travelling easy. And then the America that interests me is that reflected to us in the mass media. The America of cinema, of television, of magazines, of publicity – in a word, the ‘models’ seem to me more important than this or that aspect of concrete reality, of the type ‘the smell of the fields of wheat in Iowa’. No need to travel: these models are sent to us direct by satellite! These days, journeys are practically pointless. -- 1985: Tony Cartano and Maxim Jakubowski. The Past Tense of J.G. Ballard Originally published in French as ‘Le passé composé de J.G. Ballard’, Magazine Littéraire 219, May 1985. Translated by Dan O’Hara
The British Science Fiction Association shortlist for Long Non-Fiction category 2025: Track Changes by Abigail Nussbaum (Briardene Books) Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 2: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing More Subgenres of Science Fiction by Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan (Luna Press Publishing) The Book Blinders by John Clute (Norstrilia Press) Keith Roberts’s Pavane: A Critical Companion by Paul Kincaid (Palgrave) JG Ballard’s Crash: A Critical Companion by Paul March Russell (Palgrave)
samples of Rick McGrath's JG Ballard book collection including rare copies of the pulped edition of The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash and Empire of the Sun
Extract from Andrew C Wenaus The Literature of Exclusion: “in every respect the typical Ballard character ... discovers rather than initiates” and “finds himself drawn into a logic he is compelled to investigate.” Bonsall's Twitter bots are the scouts sent ahead—not into shopping malls, airports, or luxury high-rises—but onto the internet to see how the future may unfold according to an inhuman psychopathology of algorithmic culture. Bonsall ultimately establishes a means by which Ballard can operate according to the nihilism at the logical center of an intensified non-place. In this sense, the BallardBots operate in abstract ways outside signification, time, relation, and value.
An Xmas eCard with heading BALLARDIAN XMAS GREETINGS ... from a fever dream karaoke in the Metro-Centre. Image is a Lego diorama made in LeoCAD of a jolly person in santa hat singing in front of a massive TV screen, bottles and rubbish scattered about
Cover of Neal Stevenson's Novel 'Polostan'
A screenshot of the JG Ballard concordance webpage, zooming into the keyword 'crash'
Drawing of JG Ballard's house with text: This is 36 Old Charlton Road, in the sleepy London suburb of Shepperton. Built in the 1930s, this unassuming house was once home to "The Seer of Shepperton" - J G Ballard. Madness is always but a step away in Ballard's seemingly serene suburbs. Why then did he spend the majority of his life living there? [Shepperton is not actually a suburb of London, it is in Surrey]
BBC Weather forecast for Sheffield, predicting 9C, zero rain and sunny periods but with winds of over 30,000 mph!
Photo of Pam Zoline's article 'Crashing Cars and Other Acts of Love' with image of the New Arts Lab in London
Cover of book by Paul March-Russell, J. G. Ballard's "Crash" from Palgrave Macmillan
French paper advertising Ballard's Crash "The first masterpiece of science fiction." Le Monde "A real literary coup." L'Express "Diabolically intelligent." Le Figaro
US soldier wears cooling vest with odd piping attached
Photo of the older JG Ballard in his study with painting by Brigid Marlin, a recreation of a lost Delvaux, in background
Rick McGrath together with many parcels containing his JG Ballard archive ready for shipment to Simon Fraser University
Three cards from the Ballardian Tarot, The Hanged Man, The Devil and The High Priestess
“The Day of the Locust,” Nathanael West “Collected Short Stories,” Ernest Hemingway “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge “The Annotated Alice,” ed. Martin Gardner “The World through Blunted Sight,” Patrick Trevor-Roper “The Naked Lunch,” William Burroughs “The Black Box,” ed. Malcolm MacPherson “Los Angeles Yellow Pages” [print of landing page] “America,” Jean Baudrillard “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí,” by Dalí
drained pool in nuclear decommissioning site
photo of attendees at conference, Chris is in back row, seventh from left, next to Fay Ballard
Still from University Challenge 04 December 2023. Subtitles show Manchester team saying "No, she's American. Maybe Arthur C Clarke, but I'm not sure."
The 'Xmas tree' in St Pancras Station which resembles a tall tower of bookshelves coming to a point
scan from The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, December 1, 1994 describing online communities such as The Well and Usenet
Exterior photo of mostly concrete construction of Moore Street Substation in Sheffield
An advert for apartments in Kelham Island, Sheffield saying 'City Living, Island Life'
Piranesi or Escher-like endless series of stairways
a woman in bikini lies supine next to a swimming pool
Ballard in Legoland by Mike Bonsall
cover of book showing portrait of J G Ballard