The Drowned World
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Narrated by:
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Julian Elfer
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By:
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J. G. Ballard
About this listen
A new generation discovers "the most original English writer of the last century" (China Miéville, The Nation).
Appearing in audio for the first time, this neglected Ballardian masterpiece promises to be a touchstone for environmentalists the world over.
First published in 1962, J.G. Ballard’s mesmerizing and ferociously imaginative novel not only gained him widespread critical acclaim but also established his reputation as one of the finest writers of a generation. The Drowned World imagines a terrifying world in which global warming has melted the ice caps and primordial jungles have overrun a tropical London. Set during the year 2145, this novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kearns and his team of scientists as they confront a cityscape in which nature is on the rampage and giant lizards, dragonflies, and insects fiercely compete for domination. Both an unmatched biological mystery and a brilliant retelling of Heart of Darkness - complete with a mad white hunter and his hordes of native soldiers - this “powerful and beautifully clear” (Brian Aldiss) work becomes a thrilling adventure with “an oppressive power reminiscent of Conrad” (Kingsley Amis).
©1962 J.G. Ballard. Copyright renewed 1990 by J.G. Ballard. Introduction copyright 2012 by Martin Amis (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human.... But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.
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Non-Perishable
- By Snoodely on 05-26-10
By: Douglas Preston, and others
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The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
- Burton & Swinburne, Book 1
- By: Mark Hodder
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne are sucked into the perilous depths of a moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack - and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.
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Fun Steampunk but on the outlandish side
- By Robert L. on 02-08-12
By: Mark Hodder
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The Hidden Oasis
- By: Paul Sussman
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Egypt 2153 BC: 80 priests set out under cover of darkness with a mysterious object.... Albania, 1986: A plane takes off bound for the Sudan. Somewhere over the Sahara it disappears.... The present: a mummified corpse is discovered in the dunes with a roll of camera film and a clay obelisk inscribed with a hieroglyphic sign.... Three unconnected events - or so it seems.
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Hot and Heavy in Egypt
- By Matthew on 05-10-10
By: Paul Sussman
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Stations of the Tide
- By: Michael Swanwick
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
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The Jubilee Tides will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. From author Michael Swanwick—one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction—comes a masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions.
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Hard to categorize, hard to put down
- By Robert L. on 03-25-12
By: Michael Swanwick
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Omega Days
- Omega Days, Book 1
- By: John L. Campbell
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Eight million walking dead stalk the San Francisco Bay Area, with more on the way. Scattered refugees - a priest with a bloody past, a college girl turned sniper, escaped San Quentin inmates and others - will quickly learn the three most important rules of survival: Make your bullets count. Don't fall behind. Don't...get...bitten! Fast-paced and packed with zombie action, Book One of the Omega Days series lights off the apocalypse with a scream, and tears California to pieces!
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Disappointed
- By L on 06-19-14
By: John L. Campbell
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Atlantis
- Jack Howard Series, Book 1
- By: David Gibbins
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Marine archaeologist Jack Howard has stumbled upon the keys to an ancient puzzle. With a crack team of scientific experts and ex–Special Forces commandos, he is heading for what he believes could be the greatest archaeological find of all time - the site of fabled Atlantis - while a ruthless adversary watches his every move and prepares to strike. But neither Jack nor his adversary could have imagined what awaits them in the murky depths - not only a shocking truth about a lost world but an explosive secret that could have devastating consequences today.
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Solid plausible fiction -- a touch too technical
- By GH on 06-01-15
By: David Gibbins
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The Hollow Man
- By: Dan Simmons
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
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Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity. Now Jeremy is on the run - from his mind, from his past, from himself - hoping to find peace in isolation.
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Genius writing, great book
- By David Shear on 02-28-14
By: Dan Simmons
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Blood and Ice
- By: Robert Masello
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Michael Wilde - his world recently shattered by tragedy - hopes that a monthlong assignment to the South Pole will give him a new lease on life. There, in the most inhospitable place on earth, he is simply looking to find solace...until, on a routine dive in to the polar sea, he unexpectedly finds something else entirely: a young man and woman, bound with chains and sealed forever in a block of ice. Beside them is a chest filled with a strange, and sinister, cargo.
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I really enjoyed this book
- By Nicole on 04-24-16
By: Robert Masello
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In the Ocean of Night
- Galactic Center, Book 1
- By: Gregory Benford
- Narrated by: Maxwell Caulfield
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 2019. NASA astronaut Nigel Walmsley is sent on a mission to intercept a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Ordered to destroy it, he instead discovers that it is actually the shell of a derelict space probe - a wreck with just enough power to emit a single electronic signal….
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Like some Space with your Soaps?
- By Bradley on 05-15-12
By: Gregory Benford
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To Risks Unknown
- By: Douglas Reeman
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The year: 1943. Now there was to be no more retreat for Britain and her Allies. At last the war was to be carried into enemy territory. And from captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa, the Royal Navy's Special Force was to be the probe and the spearhead of the advance. To this unorthodox war came the corvette H. M. S. Thistle and her commanding officer, John Crispin.
By: Douglas Reeman
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Tomorrow needs a marketing rollout.
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must hear to fully appreciate.
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A collection of the author's articles and reviews, giving an insight into some of the most important literary, artistic, and scientific movements and events of the last 30 years.
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Following the energy crisis of the late 20th century, America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the now climatically mutated continent. But America is unrecognizable - the Bering Strait has been dammed and much of the country has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-country journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks, to uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas.
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If you like Ballard, don't buy this audibook!
- By the kid on 10-12-13
By: J. G. Ballard
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The Kindness of Women
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A must-listen for any J. G. Ballard fan, this “capstone to a magnificent career” (San Francisco Chronicle) is the essential sequel to Empire of the Sun. Published in 1991, this semiautobiographical novel is a daring masterpiece from “one of the most important and intelligent voices in contemporary fiction” (Susan Sontag). “Rueful the way Primo Levi’s work was” (New York Times Book Review), the novel follows 15-year-old Jim Graham as he leaves the ruins of postwar Shanghai, only to find that he cannot escape his own obsession with death.
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Trash
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By: J. G. Ballard
What listeners say about The Drowned World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- redmond
- 05-14-24
Didn’t live up to the hype for me
A good post apocalypse short story. I just didn’t take away anything new or groundbreaking. Maybe it’s because I am reading it in 2024 not the time it was written. Maybe it’s because something similar to this story is so ingrained as a nice version of the probable future.
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- Ajbartman
- 07-03-19
Great read from the 60s. Classic Stuff.
Will listen to this one again. I could feel the topical forest. Great take on the future.... from the 60s.
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- Jim "The Impatient"
- 11-05-16
EGO AGAINST ID
MESMERIC INFLAMED DISK OF THE SPECTRAL SUN
This is the kind of book most editors and academia love. Nothing wrong with that, but if your just a regular Joe like me, you would like a plot. The language is beautiful and it is fun to daydream about this type of world. The first hour fulfilled that and it was great. To go from a poem to a novel, I need characters, a plot and something happening. This book had none of that. It was just a reaction to the watered world.
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32 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 12-04-16
Prophetic story about climate change
One of Ballard's smaller-scale novels, though I believe it is linked to a series of books with similar, environmentally themed stories. Amazing that he foresaw how important climate change would be, years before most people had even heard of the idea.
The writing of this thoughtful, psychological novel is very high quality, and I enjoyed listening to it, especially as read by the narrator. His pace and inflection are perfect, and the accents that he created for the dialogue are amazing. It's really a performance, not just a reading.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Bruno
- 04-14-23
Great performance, curious story
I’ve been looking forward to read this novel for a long time, unfortunately I was not impressed. Each chapter’s plot seems to get lost in the description of the scenario, the whole book was a big beat around the bush with only a couple of interesting moments. What made me listen to it till the end was the performance, brilliant! Compelling and poignant.
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- O.
- 09-24-23
Martin Amis Intro is Wrong
Ballard's last few novels very much predicted the world that we--or rather some of us--have lived in: technocrat neokiberalism gone amok, propped up by a media that doesn't really even pretend (very hard) to be honest anymore. We should be so lucky to live in the emotionally vacuous techno-psycho hellscapes from the last four Ballard novels. The Drowned World is nowhere as good as High-Rise, Unlimited Dream Company, Super-Cannes, or Ballard's later disaster novels The Drought or Hello America. But it's still the work of a surrealist master who wrote about death-dream isolation as no one else has ever done. The Amis introduction comes from a jealous Ballard wanna-be whose novels have none of the originality and unique strangeness that make Shanghai Jim's works feel like unnerving apocalypse poetry for the shellshocked survivors, or an infernal visitor-in-shadows, like quiet, coiled, complacency-shattering dream snakes with crimson eyes and ocean blue diamonds for scales. We're here for Ballard's artistry, not for the superfluous, egotistical introduction that has stunk up this audiobook as bad as did Neil Gaiman's unwanted LGB opening story to the Elric works of Ballard's friend Michael Moorcock.
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- jesse david scarbrough
- 03-27-24
Timelessness
Muy bien timely story for or Society and fun and recommended read maybe movie material
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- Julie W. Capell
- 08-09-15
Lyrical, strange, lovely, haunting
This was one of the more unusual books I have ever read. Most science fiction tends to be focused on a scientific idea, which the author extrapolates out to the future to examine what the repercussions of this idea might be. Usually the repercussions examined are societal, or governmental, or even economic. But in this book, the repercussions are entirely personal. In about two short sentences, Ballard quickly dispenses with the “science,” explaining that there were some sun spots, these made the sun get hotter, all the ice on the Earth has melted, the continents have been drowned and all that is left of mankind is living near the north pole. The rest of the book follows various characters as they react to this new world, each in their own way, although all seem to be quite mad. Playing with the idea that Jurassic weather would bring up Jurassic memories from deep within the human brain, the author does a terrific job depicting how the hallucinogenic dreams and uterine longings of each character mesmerize them and draw them ever further into the growing jungle. There are many gorgeous descriptions of the landscape, the sunlight and the rising waters and the way nature is swallowing up the buildings, roads and other artifacts of human civilization. Even the somewhat cardboard villain serves an important purpose, showing that these artifacts are useless and trying to hold onto the past is a futile gesture. It is a lyrical and strange and lovely and haunting book with images I will not soon forget.
[I listened to this as an audio book read by Julian Elfer, who did an excellent job.]
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8 people found this helpful
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- Jessica D. Atherton
- 02-12-16
great book
This is a great book. It made my long drive shorter. I recommend it to who likes a bit of sci-fi and potential romance
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2 people found this helpful
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- Dr. Joe de Beauchamp
- 02-17-22
JG Ballard
I found this book easier to go through on the audible, then having read the book in the past. When I read the book in the past some of Ballard's words were quite difficult to get through. I find his fiction extremely good, and hope you try this book.
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