The feeling that somebody has got there first and done it infinitely better than you could...

[tom_may]

... came over me when reading J.G. Ballard's visceral and epochal re-imagining-of-the-present short-story, Theatre of War (1977). This is a masterly work that is presumably under-appreciated and seldom cited because of the unfashionable nature of the short-story format and the absurd relegation of Ballard from critical attention, due to the limited

Comments

[robincarmody]

This fits well with my own piece of futurology (still mostly in my head, but getting there) in which England has become "Dollarzone East" - but crucially, in my vision, Scotland and Wales have gone over to the euro and Northern Ireland has joined the Republic, thus removing probably the majority of the resistance at one fell swoop

[tom_may]

The story contains two contrasting maps of the UK, one the official government map (US-backed) with only small areas accepted as out of control, and another which most citizens not attached to the regime use, which shows only those major cities (I think Liverpool was included as well, unsurprisingly) as outside of broad NLF (National Liberation Front) control. To all intents and purposes, Wales and