The Best of Science Fiction 12

Landscape is a formalisation of space and time. External landscapes directly reflect interior states of mind — in fact the only external landscapes which have any meaning are those which are reflected in the central nervous system by their direct analogues. I think Dali said somewhere that "mind is a state of landscape," and I think this is completely true.

This was J. G. Ballard, in an interview on the BBC, speaking about one of his highly controversial new 'condensed novels', 'You and Me and the Continuum' (recently reprinted in England Swings SF, Doubleday, 1968; another, 'You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe', is included in this volume). But his preoccupation with landscape, not as background only, but as an aspect of characterisation — not as medium but as message — has been integral to his work from the beginning: his first story, 'Prima Belladonna' (1956; most recently in SF: The Best of the Best, Delacorte, 1967), like 'Cloud Sculptors', was set in the oddly timeless brilliance of Vermilion Sands ...