Mike Bonsall
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mbonsall.bsky.social
Mike Bonsall
@mbonsall.bsky.social
660 followers 1.2K following 160 posts
Ballardian | digitizer | concordancer | code art
https://fentonville.co.uk/digital-ballard/
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mbonsall.bsky.social
IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Letter written July 18, 1969
To: H. R. Haldeman From: Bill Safire July 18, 1969. IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two 1nen are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations . In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind. PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT: The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be. AFTER THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN: A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to "the deepest of the deep," concluding with the Lord's Prayer.
August 25, 2025 at 11:17 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Extract from: A Life of My Own - Claire Tomalin (2017)
I enjoyed working with Jim Ballard, then embarking on his powerful visions of drowning and drought-stricken worlds – science fiction but in its own special category. He was an original, a charmer with a streak of melancholy and a magnificently weird imagination, his visions all his own. He told me about his childhood in a Japanese prison camp after the fall of Shanghai, and I urged him to write about it, but he had more volumes of science fiction to deliver before he would take on that task. And in 1964 he came into the office after his summer holidays and told me, simply, even abruptly, that his wife had died of pneumonia in Spain. I could hardly believe the fact or his contained response to such a sudden tragedy. He was left with three children - the eldest eight years old – whom he brought up beautifully; I remember how impressed I was when he brought them over to lunch with me at home. The Crystal World came out in 1966, and we went on working together. He had old-fashioned manners - he once presented me with an orchid - and I always enjoyed our meetings. But as the years went by both of us left Cape and we lost touch. I was amazed and very happy when in 1984 he finally published The Empire of the Sun, read it with admiration, delighted in its success and saw him again to tell him how pleased I was. It is a slightly fictionalized memoir, told with pinpoint clarity so that the slightest details imprint themselves on your imagination as you read. It won prizes, as it deserved to, and was filmed. His writing career continued, always surprising, disconcerting, effective, sometimes shocking, and, although I could not follow him into the psychosexuality of car crashes or technologically mediated masochism, I always liked him.
July 31, 2025 at 5:20 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
I absolutely love that reviewers are digging the weirdness of my little book!
Two reviews of Ballardian Diversions by Mike Bonsall. Michelle Schusterman (@MSchustAuthor) says: A brilliant, obsessive dive into the surreal and cerebral world of J.G. Ballard -- part art project, part thought experiment, all delightfully deranged. Kid Narco (@kidnarco.bsky.social) says: This is rather delightful. The work of a true obsessive, playful and self-aware. Ballard would have very politely backed away slowly.
July 15, 2025 at 2:52 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
The AI machine wants my face for £40, but not my beard ...
Flier for the Sapiens project, offering payment of £40 to have your face scanned "to help diversify gaming's digital faces". Must be clean shaven and without makeup or piercings. Part of Ten24's "mission to create a more inclusive digital future by scanning real people across Sheffield. Your face could help shape virtual characters in games, healthcare, robotics, and more."
July 15, 2025 at 1:32 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
There's now a hardback edition of my little book of Ballardian fun and games ...
Five copies of the hardback edition of Ballardian Diversions by Mike Bonsall, showing author photo on back cover
June 6, 2025 at 9:18 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
My publisher is getting generous ...
Publisher's advert for Mike Bonsall's Ballardian Diversions, Maxim Jakubowski's Cruising the Coast of Nostalgia, and Paul A Green's Terminal Transmissions. Buy 3 hardcovers for £40, softcovers £28; any 2 for £30 hardcover, softcovers £20; 1 hardcover £15, softcover £10. email rickmcgrath @ shaw dot ca
May 25, 2025 at 11:08 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Remembering Ballard 16 years on from his death

Image is a drawing of the window of his study by his daughter Fay from her collection His Trace
Fay Ballard graphite on paper drawing, 40 x 31 cm, 2015. Showing view of JG Ballard's study window, with masking tape over one pane and opening mechanism. Visible through window is lush vegetation
April 19, 2025 at 1:08 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Someone's been having fun with a post-apocalyptic vision of Sheffield ...

www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/gallery/albu...
Inspired by The Last of Us, some AI images imagining famous Sheffield buildings and landmarks slowly being reclaimed by nature — crumbling, overgrown, abandoned… but still unmistakably ours. From the city centre to the suburbs — here’s what a post-apocalyptic Sheffield might look like. In this example, a Supertram covered by and surrounded with weeds, permanently stopped at the deserted Cathedral
April 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
So this is my first, and possibly last, real book! Available on Amazon now and good booksellers soon

Inspired by JG Ballard's endlessly faceted works I've been trying for decades to make new ways of understanding them, with some interesting results

Many thanks to Rick McGrath for making it happen
cover of Ballardian Diversions by Mike Bonsall showing painting of 1920's British biplane. Back cover has author photo and text: After unsuccessfully studying psychology, medicine, art and information systems, Mike Bonsall finally gave in to his obsession with the work of JG Ballard, whose writing seems to hint at another world, just out of sight, that might somehow be reached by an ever-more intense interrogation of the text. After all, he reasoned, Ballard himself encouraged this experimental approach: "It's a little as if I were leading the reader to a deserted laboratory, and that I put a collection of specimens and all the necessary equipment at his disposal. It's his job then to relate these elements together and create reactions from them." This volume contains some of the more interesting results of his experiments.
April 11, 2025 at 10:52 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Coca-Cola advert includes text from JG Ballard 1985 interview with Tony Cartano and Maxim Jakubowski (see alt text)

The interview is taken from Extreme Metaphors: Interviews with J.G. Ballard 1967-2008 by @simonsellars.bsky.social and @skeuomorphology.bsky.social

www.thedrum.com/news/2025/04...
CARTANO/JAKUBOWSKI: Fascinated as you are by modern technologies, have you never thought of living in the United States? BALLARD: Before going to China with my parents, I spent six months in Canada, I went to Detroit, Buffalo, the Niagara falls.1 What’s more, the Shanghai I knew was entirely within the sphere of American influence: the cars, the merchandise, Coca-Cola, air conditioning, the radio stations, the comics, the lifestyle, it was all American. Today, I’d very much like to go to the United States, but up to now I haven’t had the opportunity. You know, I’ve had to bring up my three children, and that doesn’t make travelling easy. And then the America that interests me is that reflected to us in the mass media. The America of cinema, of television, of magazines, of publicity – in a word, the ‘models’ seem to me more important than this or that aspect of concrete reality, of the type ‘the smell of the fields of wheat in Iowa’. No need to travel: these models are sent to us direct by satellite! These days, journeys are practically pointless. -- 1985: Tony Cartano and Maxim Jakubowski. The Past Tense of J.G. Ballard Originally published in French as ‘Le passé composé de J.G. Ballard’, Magazine Littéraire 219, May 1985. Translated by Dan O’Hara
April 10, 2025 at 8:11 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
The British Science Fiction Association shortlist for Long Non-Fiction category 2025: Track Changes by Abigail Nussbaum (Briardene Books) Spec Fic for Newbies Vol 2: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing More Subgenres of Science Fiction by Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan (Luna Press Publishing) The Book Blinders by John Clute (Norstrilia Press) Keith Roberts’s Pavane: A Critical Companion by Paul Kincaid (Palgrave) JG Ballard’s Crash: A Critical Companion by Paul March Russell (Palgrave)
March 19, 2025 at 5:15 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branch...

The J.G. Ballard Collection, recently donated to SFU Library by charter student Rick McGrath, is a major collection of the publications and editions of J.G. Ballard together with significant archival material and memorabilia. The largest Ballard collection outside UK
samples of Rick McGrath's JG Ballard book collection including rare copies of the pulped edition of The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash and Empire of the Sun
January 15, 2025 at 8:15 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
It's a new year and my Ballard bot, killed off by X, has risen like a phoenix into the Bluesky

In his excellent The Literature of Exclusion, Andrew Wenaus wrote that my bots are the scouts sent ahead to see how the future may unfold

follow bsky.app/profile/ball...

and bsky.app/profile/cras...
Extract from Andrew C Wenaus The Literature of Exclusion: “in every respect the typical Ballard character ... discovers rather than initiates” and “finds himself drawn into a logic he is compelled to investigate.” Bonsall's Twitter bots are the scouts sent ahead—not into shopping malls, airports, or luxury high-rises—but onto the internet to see how the future may unfold according to an inhuman psychopathology of algorithmic culture. Bonsall ultimately establishes a means by which Ballard can operate according to the nihilism at the logical center of an intensified non-place. In this sense, the BallardBots operate in abstract ways outside signification, time, relation, and value. Image of sample output from J G Ballard Bot: A remarkable percentage of Science Fiction stories and novels in those days were concerned with the here and now. image of sample from Crash Cutup: As I embraced him, forcing his thighs of fragments
January 7, 2025 at 2:40 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Was recovering from flu when this image came to me. An Xmas version of a Lego diorama of Ballard's Kingdom Come (2006) from the series here:

fentonville.co.uk/lego/
An Xmas eCard with heading BALLARDIAN XMAS GREETINGS ... from a fever dream karaoke in the Metro-Centre. Image is a Lego diorama made in LeoCAD of a jolly person in santa hat singing in front of a massive TV screen, bottles and rubbish scattered about
December 20, 2024 at 2:38 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social

Cory Doctorow on Neal Stephenson's Fiction

Science fiction isn't collection of tropes, nor is it a literary style, nor is it a marketing category. It can encompass all of these, but what sf really is, is an outlook.

pluralistic.net/2024/11/04/b...
Cover of Neal Stevenson's Novel 'Polostan'
November 4, 2024 at 7:40 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
My most useful JG Ballard creation is this alphabetic concordance of keywords in his published work:
bonsall-books.co.uk/concordance/...

My most recent creation is this Ballardian Tarot:
fentonville.co.uk/tarot/

More here:
fentonville.co.uk/digital-ball...
A screenshot of the JG Ballard concordance webpage, zooming into the keyword 'crash'
October 19, 2024 at 1:03 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
The New York Times

J. G. Ballard, Secret Agent in Suburbia

A graphic tribute to the British novelist who documented the blight and brutality of the sleepy London outskirts from the 1970s into the 2000s

By Koren Shadmi - an illustrator and cartoonist based in Queens.

archive.ph/SQlJA
Drawing of JG Ballard's house with text: This is 36 Old Charlton Road, in the sleepy London suburb of Shepperton. Built in the 1930s, this unassuming house was once home to "The Seer of Shepperton" - J G Ballard. Madness is always but a step away in Ballard's seemingly serene suburbs. Why then did he spend the majority of his life living there? [Shepperton is not actually a suburb of London, it is in Surrey]
October 18, 2024 at 4:04 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
The Wind from Nowhere

(BBC Weather fault forecasts hurricanes across world)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
BBC Weather forecast for Sheffield, predicting 9C, zero rain and sunny periods but with winds of over 30,000 mph!
October 11, 2024 at 3:58 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
New Worlds No. 224

Pamela Zoline's article "Crashing Cars and Other Acts of Love" is a highlight.

A revelation is her work with JG Ballard, some months after the Crashed Cars exhibit, on a 'portrait box' of Ballard, containing books, photos, MS etc.

jaydedesign.com/product_info...
Photo of Pam Zoline's article 'Crashing Cars and Other Acts of Love' with image of the New Arts Lab in London Part of Pam Zoline's article with images of her JG Ballard 'portrait box' with door open showing books and objects belonging to Ballard
September 30, 2024 at 2:51 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
link.springer.com/book/9783031...
Cover of book by Paul March-Russell, J. G. Ballard's "Crash" from Palgrave Macmillan
September 22, 2024 at 11:57 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
"Crash", by JG Ballard, advertisement in the Nouvel Observateur of Monday July 29, 1974

"The first masterpiece of science fiction." Le Monde
"A real literary coup." L'Express
"Diabolically intelligent." Le Figaro

Were UK papers as enthusiastic?
( via @tnoisette on other site)
French paper advertising Ballard's Crash "The first masterpiece of science fiction." Le Monde "A real literary coup." L'Express "Diabolically intelligent." Le Figaro
September 17, 2024 at 10:28 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Microclimate cooling air vest, 1992

‘Some garments come with built-in ventilation and hydration tubing, giving wearers superhuman powers’

www.theguardian.com/culture/gall...
US soldier wears cooling vest with odd piping attached
September 6, 2024 at 9:21 AM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Posted by JG Ballard's daughter Beatrice in another place

archive.ph/MS4D0
Photo of the older JG Ballard in his study with painting by Brigid Marlin, a recreation of a lost Delvaux, in background
September 2, 2024 at 1:36 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
Rick McGrath has gifted his great JG Ballard archive to Simon Fraser University. I'm proud some of my JGB pieces are part of that collection (online versions still at digital-ballard). And of course Rick's website is still invaluable jgballard.ca
Rick McGrath together with many parcels containing his JG Ballard archive ready for shipment to Simon Fraser University
July 25, 2024 at 1:32 PM
mbonsall.bsky.social
I’ve been working on a Ballardian updating of the tarot. Get a reading from link below, free to use.

Let me know what you think. (Site looks better on wider screens)

fentonville.co.uk/tarot
Three cards from the Ballardian Tarot, The Hanged Man, The Devil and The High Priestess
May 26, 2024 at 10:25 AM