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Rating: 
Summary: Take a Mental Vacation to Vermilion Sands
Review: My personal favorite collection of stories from Ballard, and many people I've spoken to also hold a fondness for this group of stories. Although many of the story concepts repeat the theme of the tragic female figure and the tortured man who loves her and gets caught in the dramatic conflict, it is a lush and expansive vision that weaves through the collection. The title refers to a fictional beach resort, a playground of burnt out executives and movie stars at play, or in retreat from the rest of the world. As with most Ballard fiction, you get the distinct impression that these stories are actually taking place somewhere, and perhaps Ballard has just changed the names to protect the decadent. The vivid details of living clothing, cloud sculptors and singing sculptures are so intense, it's a bit of a surprise that Hollywood hasn't adapted some of these stories to the currently CGI movie craze. Then again, like most of what Ballard writes about, that could be coming just around the corner...
Rating:
Summary: Take a Mental Vacation to Vermilion Sands
Review: My personal favorite collection of stories from Ballard, and many people I've spoken to also hold a fondness for this group of stories. Although many of the story concepts repeat the theme of the tragic female figure and the tortured man who loves her and gets caught in the dramatic conflict, it is a lush and expansive vision that weaves through the collection. The title refers to a fictional beach resort, a playground of burnt out executives and movie stars at play, or in retreat from the rest of the world. As with most Ballard fiction, you get the distinct impression that these stories are actually taking place somewhere, and perhaps Ballard has just changed the names to protect the decadent. The vivid details of living clothing, cloud sculptors and singing sculptures are so intense, it's a bit of a surprise that Hollywood hasn't adapted some of these stories to the currently CGI movie craze. Then again, like most of what Ballard writes about, that could be coming just around the corner...
Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent stories
Review: The beachfront, decadent community of Vermilion Sands is the setting for each of the nine wonderful stories in this collection. Vermilion Sands is where the rich are. They vacation, they play, they search for lost loves, and above all, they are horribly narcissistic.Vermilion Sands is home to the magnificent singing sonic sculptures, tall statues that emit music or atonal sounds when they sense movement. The marvelous sand yachts of the rich, their trained sand rays (giant white manta rays that float through the air), the cloud-sculptors, the living clothes, and the psychotropic houses all live on in the mind long after the stories have been read. Vermilion Sands is a striking setting, one of the more memorable in fiction. The themes of the stories are fairly similar. Most dwell on unattainable or forsaken love. In "Say Goodbye to the Wind", a former model pines for her departed love. In "Studio 5, the Stars" an aspiring poetess dreams of tragic love. And so it goes in each story. But the stories are fresh and have enough energy to overcome a repetitive theme. Ballard's futuristic city stands as a monument to the power of a memorable fictional setting. Indeed, Vermilion Sands is as powerful as Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown or Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris to use two recent examples. I'm hoping that Mr. Ballad has seen fit to write more Vermilion Sands stories in the 30+ years since this collection was published. I can only hope that I find more.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent stories
Review: The beachfront, decadent community of Vermilion Sands is the setting for each of the nine wonderful stories in this collection. Vermilion Sands is where the rich are. They vacation, they play, they search for lost loves, and above all, they are horribly narcissistic. Vermilion Sands is home to the magnificent singing sonic sculptures, tall statues that emit music or atonal sounds when they sense movement. The marvelous sand yachts of the rich, their trained sand rays (giant white manta rays that float through the air), the cloud-sculptors, the living clothes, and the psychotropic houses all live on in the mind long after the stories have been read. Vermilion Sands is a striking setting, one of the more memorable in fiction. The themes of the stories are fairly similar. Most dwell on unattainable or forsaken love. In "Say Goodbye to the Wind", a former model pines for her departed love. In "Studio 5, the Stars" an aspiring poetess dreams of tragic love. And so it goes in each story. But the stories are fresh and have enough energy to overcome a repetitive theme. Ballard's futuristic city stands as a monument to the power of a memorable fictional setting. Indeed, Vermilion Sands is as powerful as Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown or Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris to use two recent examples. I'm hoping that Mr. Ballad has seen fit to write more Vermilion Sands stories in the 30+ years since this collection was published. I can only hope that I find more.
Rating:
Summary: Remembrance of things to come
Review: This collection of elegant, minatory stories about the has-been resort community of Vermilion Sands and the human flotsam that washes up on its derelict shores comprises some of author J.G. Ballard's most accessible work. His imaginative gifts and jade cool prose are everywhere on display in these stories. Sailplane artists sculpt the clouds into likenesses of their patrons. Psychosensitive houses are driven insane by their owners and bio-fabrics shimmer and pulse to their wearers moods. Ballard likes to create strange, surreal outerscapes and unite these with the straitened innerscapes of his protagonists, then narrate what happens next. In Vermilion Sands he exceeds wonderfully
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