The Ballard stories I always think of whenever I hear his name are “The Enormous Space,” “Report on an Unidentified Space Station,” and “War Fever,” all of which are included in the collection pictured above. The first two stories I studied as an undergraduate, not in a creative writing class but in a literature course called “Eccentric Spaces and Spacialities.” Not “space” as in “outer space,” but as in “the distance between here and there, or “the place I call home,” etc. We read Ballard alongside Gaston Bachelard (Poetics of Space), Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping), excerpts from Dante and Homer (descents into Hades), Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth) and plenty more that I’m forgetting just now. The third story, “War Fever,” was on my radar when I was editing The Apocalypse Reader, but my query about reprint rights wasn’t returned by FSG until well after the book had been finalized, and sent to press. But it’s a magnificent story–they all are.
Hippolytos, the insufferable son of Theseus, was a celebutard of antiquity. In Euripides’ play, the dandy loves only two things: himself and the goddess Artemis. He’s even got an entourage to follow him around and tell him how great and pure he is. Yes, pure. He is untouched by woman, devoting himself exclusively to his chosen deity. The problem is, his chastity and vomit-inducing self-regard has pissed off Aphrodite, who takes his piss-poor attitude as an affront. Theseus is out of town, and Aphro believes the time of her revenge is at hand. Did I mention that Hippolytos’ stepmother is in forbidden love with her stepson? 
