FRESH

Hacker News

Home

Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)

112 points by paulmooreparks

by hootz

3 subcomments

Making a modern analogy, reading this feels kinda similar to reading about the Backrooms, but with a bigger, existential dread. Amazing.

by drayfield

4 subcomments

Some interesting parallels to BLAME!, a manga about an ever-expanding colossal city:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame!

by Hackbraten

2 subcomments

I can recommend the excellent novels Concrete Island [0] and High-Rise [1] from the same author.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Island
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Rise_(novel)

by robocat

0 subcomment

Similar discussion about 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47614100

by ShadowOfThePit

2 subcomments

Reads like an early SCP exploration log.
Although, I'm not sure if I get it. They end up making a religion out of it, but does that have a deeper meaning?

by xelxebar

0 subcomment

This could possibly be hinting at a hyperbolic geometry. The game HyperRogue[0] gives of similar feels: you'll be walking through a cat invite land and spot a small dot on the horizon, only to discover that it's yet another vast infinite land. The game also kind of goes all in on the different tilings that a hyperbolic plane admits!
[0]:https://zenorogue.itch.io/hyperrogue

by iamjs

2 subcomments

Reminds me of Borges

by Hugsbox

1 subcomments

Really enjoyed reading this, but kind of lost on what the deeper meaning might have been, if any.

by andyjohnson0

0 subcomment

For context, Ballard wrote this in 1982.

by rullelito

2 subcomments

I didn't get anything out of this. Felt very simple and not very mind-bending. Should I feel something?

by Schlagbohrer

0 subcomment

Liminal space vibes indeed. Very of our time, showing that Ballard was once again ahead of his.

by tontonius

2 subcomments

just read it and not entirely sure what the allegory was, if any.
some ideas off the top of my head:
- "humans invent meaning after losing orientation": instead of simply accepting reality (we cant comprhened, our instruments cant measure this, we are lost etc) they turn helplessness into theology
- "science-becomes-religion": hypotheses, measurements revise previous findings into increasing absurdity which eventually becomes religion.
-" life as a waiting room": the station is an allegory for life or conciousness. we're all solitary voyagers on our infinite journey thru the "waiting rooms" of our existence. the journey is the destination etc
curious to hear other riffs/takes on this

by anax32

0 subcomment

This was a big moment for me, but I now believe it's fictional.
Thanks Ballard

by cl3misch

2 subcomments

> Our voices echoed away into a bottomless pit [of the elevator shaft]
Would voices actually "echo away" in a literally bottomless pit?

by nickdothutton

0 subcomment

We all live in Ballard's future now. I encourage you to check out some of his interviews on YT.

by atombender

0 subcomment

(1982)

by ReyX

0 subcomment

Start reading first

by atombender

0 subcomment

This is one of my favorite short stories.
Ballard is best known for his novels, but he also wrote a number of exceptional stories — some favourites include "The Drowned Giant", "A Question of Re-Entry", "The Terminal Beach", "The Garden of Time", "Dream Cargo", and some of his earlier stories like "Billennium", "Chronopolis", "The Concentration City" (also published as "Build-Up").
There's a two-volume collection of all his short stories, although it honestly contains more misses than hits. The individual collections "The Terminal Beach" and "Vermillion Sands" are great.
Ballard had several "niches" he operated in. One thread running through much of his work is a preoccupation with physical spaces and architecture, inhabited by alienated characters with some repressed, dark psychological traits (obsessiveness, violence, narcissism) that's held in check by modern society. He keeps going back to the theme of men (they're almost always men) regressing to a "natural" violent state: High Rise, Running Wild, Crash, Super-Cannes, Cocaine Nights, and so on are all about this. His later books are a little tiring because of this; too many books about rich people using violence as a means of psychological release, with a smattering of pop psychology stuff that frankly hasn't aged super well.
Personally, I find his earlier, wilder, more abstract fiction a little bit more interesting the later stuff. I would recommend starting with The Crystal World, which is fantastic.

by swiftcoder

0 subcomment

Always loved this one

by fatbird

0 subcomment

For a second I was excited that someone had built a space station in Earth's orbit secretly. Perhaps a military station by a world power, perhaps a minor power's attempt to achieve a continuous presence in space, perhaps a private effort.
How it was built secretly, and hidden from discovery until now, and why would make for a legitimately engrossing topic in the news.
Not a bad story, but not as gratifying as my mistaken first assumption either.

by t23414321

0 subcomment

it's fictional

by lupire

2 subcomments

Flagged for misleading title

by rfarley04

0 subcomment

Tower of Babel by Ted Chiang is another comparison worth mentioning

by bb123

3 subcomments

I feel this should have a note that it's fictional in the title. I clicked this expecting to read about some kind of space race development with China or Russia.

by throw310822

3 subcomments

Annoying nitpick:
> Our solar system and its planets, the millions of other solar systems that constitute our galaxy, and the island universes themselves all lie within the boundaries of the station. The station is coeval with the cosmos [...]
> Estimated diameter: 15,000 light years.
Uhmm..
Yes I know, the entire construction is not striving for realism and neither should be taken literally.