The Day of Creation is the first non-Science-fiction book of J.G. Ballard that I have read. I have read many Ballard books in the 70's and 80's when I started reading lots of science fiction. I especially liked his short stories which sometimes had surrealist images and stories a bit like Jorge Luis Borges. I keep remembering the poignant story The Drowned Giant from the book The Terminal Beach.The book tells the story of Dr. Mallory, who is treating patients in a central African country and also overseeing some irrigation projects so as to bring water to this arid part of the world.He is in a conflict zone when government forces and guerrilla forces are fighting it out. Both sides are treating him with some respect but also are afraid of any advantage their opponents can gain by utilizing him. He inadvertently creates a small flow, which then turns into a small stream. Mallory suspects that the water is coming from a secret underground reservoir and might end up draining all that, removing any chance of irrigating the area. He decides to go to the source of the river and destroy it. He is trailed - pursued - by a young girl who used to be part of the guerrilla movement and a filmmaker who is interested in capturing images for the Japanese viewers.As Mallory and the girl, sometimes tracked by the relentless government Major who is hunting him because he stole his boat and car, Mallory becomes more and more obsessed with the stream, for which he has claimed objective by bribing the Major initially. He is also trying to educate the young girl. Events will unfold in an unexpected twist.It is a quite interesting book, since the story line progresses very slowly, mimicking the slow growth the tiny stream Mallory created undergoes. It is almost a journey to the human soul, while describing the plight of Africans, which has not really changed since the book was written (about 20 years ago). It gave me the motivation to read more non-SF from Ballard.
What the hell just happened? I guess this isn't the first book I've read about traveling down a river with a narrator whose reliability is questionable at best. Well I suppose he is traveling up a river. Who is he? Dr. Mallory, an Englishman running a clinic for the WHO in Africa. He's obsessed with irrigating the local town and with the idea of another Nile to green the Sahara. The river of his dreams comes pouring through, and he's convinced he caused it. And so as everything goes mad around him due to a combination of the newly struck river and the general environment, he endeavors to travel to the source of the river. There are guerrillas and a documentary crew and a creepy obsession with a young girl associated with the guerrillas who he decides is somehow the spirit of the river. The whole thing is feverish literally and figuratively.There are a lot of tricks I associate with Gene Wolfe where it's hinted that something is happening, but he doesn't spell it out, and then refers to it later as if it is clear what he means. In fact the whole thing reminded me of Gene Wolfe and particularly the parts sailing with Seawrack from On Blue's Waters.
I just started on my J.G. Ballard kick after reading Empire of the Sun, which I highly recommend. This one is good, but not as good as Empire. Semi-autobiographical novels seem to find their own impetus and become the writer's best novel. Such as Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five being his best book, in my opinion, compared to his other books, which I did like quite a bit. Or Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. Same thing. Beautiful imagery of going up the new Nile in the desert of Africa, causing war and strife between factions and individuals alike.
—Lala
Definitely not my favourite Ballard, this book starts well and I was thinking "wow, 25 years on and still an accurate picture of fringe Saharan Africa" with army, guerrillas, aid workers and economic leeches from the North. But once the river appears we are off into the realms of "the meaning of life" with echoes of "Heart of Darkness". Oddly enough I have recently seen "Mud" and some of the descriptive passages reminded me of that film and it's source.But as I goes on, it begins to drag and as the water ran out so did my enthusiasm for this book. I don't need to worry about whether or not to read any more Ballard; finishing this means I have read them all and they have generally been more rewarding than this.
—John
A reverie of great rivers had overwhelmed me, moments marked by the measures of dream and myth. I sat under the canvas awning in the bows of the ferry, as the hours and days slid us through the copper haze that lay over the distant channel of the Mallory.Mallory is a WHO doctor in the arid African town of Port-la-Nouvelle, which is threatened by the encroachment of the Sahara and an anti-government guerrilla army of General Harare. As well as running a clinic, he has taken charge of a drilling project searching for underground water. When he accidentally uncovers a spring that rapidly develops into a wide river and fills the long-dry lake bed, he is dismayed that it will ruin his drilling project. After initial attempts to stem its flow fail he steals a boat and heads upstream, with his head filled with conflicting dreams of greening the Sahara, and destroying 'his' river at its source, which is now hundreds of miles north of the spring where it first broke through.This is one of Ballard's books that has a very dream-like feel to it, for the reader as much as for the increasingly crazed characters.
—Isabel (kittiwake)
