The fact that nothing else will ever happen to them again is just by the bye. To be crystallized is to have time, and thus the progress of the disease, stop to be alive but to cease decaying. For there are some people, including a band of lepers led by the protagonist's ex-lover, want to be crystallized. It's possibly the first book ever for which one wishes one had sunglasses for one's mind's eye.ĭazzling as the book is - and not just visually the scientific explanation for how and why this is happening, involving theories about sub-atomic particles and space-time that I do not feel adequate to explaining here, is also quite dazzling - it's also one of the most melancholy reads I've encountered since, say The Road. As such, there is some seriously gorgeous prose to be had in this book, and thus much enjoyment, if that is your thing. Ballard, perhaps mesmerized by the very idea of his creation, took great pains to share its every sparkly, shiny, spiny detail.

Description of same makes up the bulk of its verbiage. I mention this because the play of light on the surfaces of the slowly (and sometimes not-so-slowly) transforming surfaces of the jungles in The Crystal World is very, very important. And Greenaway could maybe pep up the story a little. But their mastery of light in cinema, especially as demonstrated in Drowning By Numbers and A Zed and Two Noughts, could alone bring Ballard's exquisite vision to the screen.Īnd there, I would love to see it. Flawed as this short little novel is, I weep that our ideal time for a cinematic adaptation of it is past, for I can think of no team who could do it justice as Peter Greenaway and Sacha Vierney could have, and they don't work together anymore.

The crystal world