Vermilion Sands

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Vermilion Sands is the title of a collection of short stories by the author James Graham Ballard that appeared in 1971. The title translates as: "Vermilion Beach", but the book was published in Germany under the title "The thousand dreams of Stellavista".

The location of the action is the fictional Vermilion Sands in Southern California , which is strikingly similar to Palm Springs . It is a fully automated holiday complex in the desert. The people are mostly disaffected rich people or opportunists from their environment who benefit greatly from them. The stories differ in the choice of utopian media. So in one there is singing statues, in another it is architecture. But they always present themselves as particularly decadent, similar to the baroque .

The individual titles come exclusively from Ballard and at least some of them have already been published.

Single track (original)

  • The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D (1967), German Die Wolkenbildner von Coral D
  • Prima Belladonna (1956), same German
  • The Screen Game (1963), German Das Kulissenspiel
  • The Singing Statues (1962), German The singing sculptures
  • Cry Hope, Cry Fury! (1967), German Hope Cunard
  • Venus Smiles (1957; rewritten in 1967), German The Venus smiles
  • Say Goodbye to the Wind (1970), German Say goodbye to the wind
  • Studio 5, The Stars (1961), German Studio 5
  • The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (1962), German The thousand dreams of Stellavista

Reactions

  • The Times : Vermilion Sands is a desert resort from ahead; the episodes are the grains of the place ... I recommend a visit with this book, where the aching landscape of the idea contains wit and irony to shade us from the anguished sun . German: Vermilion Sands is a desert resort from the front; the stories are the grains of sand of this place - I recommend a detour to this book, in which the suffering landscape of ideas contains a lot of wit and irony to protect us from the dreaded sun.
  • Times Literary Supplement : JG Ballard is… one of the most accomplished creators of evocative landscapes in modern fiction… he achieves this effect partly by painting his desert in the manner of Dali, a mixture of appalling clarity and the exotic. English: JG Ballard is ... one of the most capable developers of impressive landscapes in modern literature ... he achieves this effect in part by painting his desert painting in the manner of Dali, a mixture of terrifying clarity and exoticism.

Influence on music

  • The Buggles : Vermilion Sands (pop song)
  • Moritz Eggert : Vermilion Sands for guitar solo (both pieces inspired by the story collection of the same name)
  • A Japanese progressive rock band in the 1980s was called Vermilion Sands .
  • An Italian pop band from Treviso also chose Vermilion Sands as a name.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James G. Ballard: The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista and Other Vermilion Sands Stories . Suhrkamp, ​​1982, ISBN 978-3-518-37333-0 , ( limited preview in Google book search)
  2. ↑ James Graham Ballard: The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista. Retrieved January 9, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b Vermilion Sands (1971). In: ballardian.com. Retrieved January 9, 2015 .