War Fever - ISBN 0374525765 - paperback, 176 pages

War Fever - Audio Cassette/Special Order - ISBN 1856955915 Nigel Carrington (Narrator)

Stories in this collection:

• "War Fever"
• "The Secret History of World War 3"
• "Dream Cargoes"
• "The Object of the Attack"
• "Love in a Colder Climate"
• "The Largest Theme Park in the World"
• "Answers to a Questionnaire"
• "The Air Disaster"
• "Report on an Unidentified Space Station"
• "The Man Who Walked on the Moon"
• "The Enormous Space"
• "Memories of the Space Age"
• "Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown"
• "The Index"

From astronauts to children in the slums of Beirutt, inner and outer conflict is the thread that appears in each of the stories in this collection. The title story take place in the aforementioned Beirut, where we are left to wonder if the conflict will ever end. "The Secret History of World War Three" and its portrayal of the Regan presidency seems all too realistic, even more so today as the nightly news still makes the former president's health a headline event.

• "In this new story collection, his first for almost a decade, J.G. Ballard is remarkably adept at blurring the distinction between the realities of the present day and his disturbing scenarios of life in the very near future."
• "There is a disturbing, unflinching vision at work in War Fever, as well as a formidable sense of humor and a frequent disregard for traditional modes of short-story narrative. Throughout, it is clear that we are in the hands of a writer with what one critic has called 'a remarkable gift for filling the empty, deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and wonder world of imagination.'"
  • comments from dust jacket of 1991 Farrar Straus Giroux First edition