“A new social type was being created by the apartment building, a cool, unemotional personality impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life, with minimal needs for privacy, who thrived like an advanced species of machine in the neutral atmosphere. This was the sort of resident who was content to do nothing but sit in his over-priced apartment, watch television with the sound turned down, and wait for his neighbors to make a mistake… people who were content with their lives in the high-rise, who felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and data-processing organizations, and if anything welcomed welcomed these inevitable intrusions, using them for their own purposes.” - JG Ballard, High-Rise (1975)
OK everybody always talks about 1984 and BNW whenever the question of "prophetic literature" comes up, what else comes to mind? I've just finished pic related, (and living in Denver, where generic over-priced high-rise apartments/condos are going up like weeds), it really did seem like JGB really was on to something with this book.
>>8071427____ :^) _____
>>8071427
If he was trying to say that apartments breed crime degeneracy then yeah, he had a point.
Seeing as he wrote it in 1975 I'd say it was more observational than prophetic.
>>8071513
>crime degeneracy
crime and degeneracy*
The prophecy came true.
That's about as prophetic as it gets.
>>8071427
The machine stops
>>8071427
Yeah, he's onto something - if you liked that, check out his last couple of novels as it's the same kind of social pathology but set in larger, though equally exclusive/tribal communities.
Kingdom Come was good, is set in a right wing suburb that's obsessed with sports teams and consumerism, reminded me of High Rise a fair bit when it went off the deep end.
Great thing about Ballard is it's never "just" social commentary, there's always the suggestion that his characters are exploring their subconscious and reaching some kind of truth as a result of everything breaking down around them; I think he nailed a lot of things about modern society but the strength of his writing is in the suggestion that we want the chaos and violence, that we create situations that allow and promote it...
![Debord_SocietyofSpectacle[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vZZ1r09.jpg "Debord_SocietyofSpectacle[1].jpg")
He depicted the smart-phone culture before any idea of cell-phones was even conceived.
>>8071427
>>8071427
BNW and 1984 came true to some extent
>>8071636
This book prophetized that Shadowrun would become a game.
>>8071513
is this what suburban/rural america believes?
>>8071666
I was more thinking of tower blocks in the UK during that time which were renowned for being utterly shit.
Nice assumption though, faggot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_block#Great_Britain
>Later, as the buildings themselves deteriorated, they grew a reputation for being undesirable low cost housing, and many tower blocks saw rising crime levels, increasing their unpopularity
>Although architects and local authorities intended the opposite, tower blocks quickly became, as Hanley sharply stated, 'slums in the sky'.
>>8071427
that was not at all profetic.
It was written in 1975, when the myth of modernist architecture as capable of healing social woes had been completely debunked.
Ballard was mostly an observant of the world around him, and quite critic of modern architecture and modern urban landscapes.
He was quite a sharp critic, but he really never had much of an intent into being truly prophetic
>>8071629
Guy Debord is outsanding.
Situacionism is really the only 60's/70's leftist movement that I can get into, honestly.
Anyway, Schumpeter seems to be ever more prophetic in his analysis of the evolution of Capitalism and Socialism
>>8071770
>later, as the buildings themselves deteriorated
>buildings... deteriorated
Rich people don't live in busted up old buildings. That doesn't mean that high-rises breed crime and degeneracy.
>>8071794
Homeboy probably quickly drove past the projects, pissing his pants, once and thought "This is what every building is like".
