The Terminal Beach is one of Ballard's most brilliant collections of short stories, ranging from the title-story's disturbing picture of an abandoned atomic testing island n the Pacific to the shocking Oedipal fantasy of 'The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon'. At the heart of the stories lies the bitter paradox that the extradorinary creative power of man's imagination is matched only by his reckless instinct for destruction.

• from the back cover of the Everyman edition

'It is utterly appropriate to number Ballard among the true contemporary radicals of the imagination, to mention in the same breath as Burroughs or Genet or Carroll or Rimbaud. His best work is simply a new way of looking at the world.' -- New Musical Express

Stories in this collection:

• A Question of Re-entry
• The Drowned Giant
• End-Game
• The Illuminated Man
• The Reptile Enclosure
• The Delta at Sunset
• The Terminal Beach
• Deep End
• The Volcano Dances
• Billennium
• The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon
• The Lost Leonardo