Science and Technology in James Graham Ballard’s Crash
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Abstract
J. G. Ballard’s Crash (1973) is one of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century. Instead of imagining future worlds filled with spaceships or robots, Ballard focuses on something very ordinary: the car. But in Crash, cars are not simply machines for travel. They become connected to people’s deepest desires, fears, and fantasies. The present paper studies how science and technology, especially the car and the culture around it, play a central role in the novel. It focuses three main points: (1) how the car becomes an object of sexuality and obsession, (2) how scientific and medical language changes the way we see accidents and the body, and (3) how the book is a warning about the strange relationship between modern technology, media, and human psychology.
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References
Ballard, J. G. (1973) Crash. Jonathan Cape
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Collins, Robert. (1995). J. G. Ballard and the Catastrophe of the Media. Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 41, no. 3–4.