Bibliography of Uncollected JGB Stories
Uncollected J.G. Ballard




This set of files contains (i) all of the short stories that have not been collected in either The Complete Short Stories or the The Complete Stories, plus (ii) publications by Ballard that can be classified as ‘miscellaneous media’ -- collages, prose-poems, experimental pieces. A couple of items could not be scanned without breaking the binding, or were too large for the scanner, and have therefore been photographed.




1) Short Stories:

The Violent Noon: Varsity, 26 May 1951. The Violent Noon was written when Ballard was aged 20 for a short story competition in the Cambridge University magazine Varsity. It won.

Coitus 80: New Worlds, #197, January 1970. This was a predecessor of Ballard's 'surgical fictions', where he took actual descriptions of surgical procedures and replaced the patient description with the name of a famous personality.

Journey Across a Crater: New Worlds, #198, February 1970. This is an early attempt to address the themes of the 1973 novel Crash in the same ‘condensed novel’ style used in The Atrocity Exhibition. Ballard has said that in his view the story didn’t really work.

Queen Elizabeth’s Rhinoplasty: TriQuarterly, #35, Winter 1976. Another 'surgical fiction'. This one was included in the Re/Search annotated edition of The Atrocity Exhibition, but has been omitted from all U.K. editions.

Jane Fonda’s Augmentation Mammoplasty: in Semiotext(e) SF, ed. Rudy Rucker 1989. The last of Ballard's 'surgical fictions', which appeared in a paperback anthology of (to quote the publishers) 'post-cyberpunk science fiction and other matter'.

Neil Armstrong Remembers His Journey to the Moon: Interzone, #53, November 1991. A brief vignette.


2) Miscellaneous Media:

a) Advertisers Announcements: Ballard’s most famous piece of experimental work is the set of five “Advertisers Announcements” he did for Ambit magazine from 1967-1971.
According to Ballard: “Back in the late 60s I produced a series of advertisements which I placed in various publications (Ambit, New Worlds, Ark and various continental alternative magazines), doing the art work myself and arranging for the blockmaking, and then delivering the block to the particular journal just as would a commercial advertiser. Of course I was advertising my own conceptual ideas, but I wanted to do so within the formal circumstances of classic commercial advertising – I wanted ads that would look in place in Vogue, Paris Match, Newsweek, etc. To maintain the integrity of the project I paid the commercial rate for the page, even in the case of Ambit, of which I was and still am Prose Editor. I would liked to have branched out into Vogue and Newsweek, but cost alone stopped me…" The "ads" are:

Homage to Claire Churchill: Ambit, #32, Summer 1967. The first 'advertiser's announcement'.

Does the Angle between Two Walls have a Happy Ending?: Ambit, #33, Autumn 1967.

A Neural Interval: Ambit, #36, Summer 1968.

Placental Insufficiency: Ambit, #45, Autumn 1970.

* Venus Smiles: Ambit, #46, Winter 1970/1971. The fifth and final 'advertiser's announcement'.


b) The Bathroom: The Running Man, #2, July-August 1968. A film review, of sorts, sufficiently impressionistic to be classified as Miscellaneous Media rather than non-fiction in David Pringle’s 1984 bibliography.


c) J.G. Ballard’s Court Circular: a collage which includes a concrete poem titled ‘Love: A Print-Out for Claire Churchill’: Ambit, #37, Autumn 1968.


d) How Dr Christopher Evans Landed on the Moon: New Worlds, #187, February 1969. A spoof computer printout.


e) The Side-Effects of Orthonovin G: Ambit, #50, Spring 1972. This was originally thought to be a set of satirical monologues, purportedly written by members of the Department of Sociology, Yale University. However, according to Martin Bax, editor of Ambit, they are 'found texts' -- short biographies written by American women who had taken Orthonovin G., a birth control pill.


f) The Invisible Years: Ambit, #67, Summer 1976. The Invisible Years was a series of texts to accompany drawings by Ronald Sandford, written by Ballard, Martin Bax, and various others. The series ran for fourteen issues of Ambit, #66 to #79. The credits for all fourteen of the individual texts refer to both Ballard and Bax, although David Pringle attributes just six of these texts directly to Ballard, mainly on grounds of style, and only these six have been included.

g) ‘The Invisible Years’: Ambit, #69, Winter 1976/1977 

h) ‘The Invisible Years’: Ambit, #72, Autumn 1977 

i) ‘The Invisible Years’: Ambit, #73, Winter 1977/1978 

j) ‘The Invisible Years’: Ambit, #75, Summer 1978 

k) ‘The Invisible Years’: Ambit, #78, Spring 1979 


l) Project For A New Novel: New Worlds, #213, Summer 1978. During 1958 or '59, Ballard put together a series of collages that incorporated themes and names that were later to resurface in the stories that formed The Atrocity Exhibition. These collages were eventually published in New Worlds #213. In July 2008, at the “J.G. Ballard: Autopsy of the New Millennium” exhibition at Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Culture, it was discovered that the exhibition organizers had obtained a framed copy of Project For A New Novel from Ambit Editor Dr Martin Bax, and this exhibit revealed there were not four, but five double-page layouts.


m) What I Believe: Interzone, #8, Summer 1984. A prose poem, originally published in French in Science Fiction #1 (ed. Daniel Riche) in January 1984.