2009 books
34) J.G. Ballard, The Venus Hunters, 1980 ( RE-READ )
I picked this up to re-read what I remembered as being a damn good story, 'The Venus Hunters', but ended up re-reading the whole collection and particularly enjoying another great story, 'The Time Tombs'. These two are both unusual stories for Ballard in that they deal specifically with extraterrestrials (possibly his least typical subject matter) but then there is also the memorable 'The Killing Ground', a strong story about England being occupied by imperialist American forces. For light relief there's 'Passport to Eternity' depicting an interstellar utopian society where even planetary wars are a form of leisure for the bored elite; its clever Orwellian beginning underpins everything but ultimately it's little more than an inventive but rather shallow novelty. But for me the best is still 'The Venus Hunters', a story told at a perfect pace and in which Ballard placed as much importance on what he left out as what he put in.