I can recommend the excellent novels Concrete Island [0] and High-Rise [1] from the same author.
Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
11–20 of 87 posts
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#12I 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.
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#13I 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.
I mean it's pretty obvious from the very first paragraph, isn't it?
> By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster.
Lots of short stories on HN have just their original title with nothing like [Novella] or whatever, seems fine.
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#14> Our voices echoed away into a bottomless pit [of the elevator shaft]
Would voices actually "echo away" in a literally bottomless pit?
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#15We all live in Ballard's future now. I encourage you to check out some of his interviews on YT.
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#16For context, Ballard wrote this in 1982.
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#17Annoying 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.
Pretty sure this is a Tardis bigger-on-the-inside situation
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#18I didn't get anything out of this. Felt very simple and not very mind-bending. Should I feel something?
Its an almost 45 year-old short story that appeared in a print collection of other short stories. The submitted page kind of loses much of that context - and possibly feels dated or simplistic because of that?
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#19I 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.
I mean it's pretty obvious from the very first paragraph, isn't it? > By good luck we have been able to make an emergency landing on this uninhabited space station. There have been no casualties. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found safe haven at a moment when the expedition was clearly set on disaster. Lots of short stories on HN have just their original title with nothing like [Novella] or whatever, seems…
Sure but isn't that the definition of clickbait?
Re: Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)
#20Flagged for misleading title