War Fever

176 pp. "A war-ravaged Beirut is the setting for the title story of this visionary collection, a tale in which a young street fighter inadvertently discovers how to bring an to the bloodshed only to find that his solution is all too effective as far as some supposedly neutral observers are concerned. Other stories feature an assassination plot against an American astronaut, the leader of an authoritarian religious movement; a man who is destroyed by a car crash and resolves never to leave his apartment again; and the survivor of a toxic-waste ship wrecked on a deserted Caribbean island." War Fever is a collection of short stories by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1990 by Collins. It includes: "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". These pieces range from naturalistic narrative ("The Air Disaster"), through science fantasy ("Dream Cargoes"), to stories told through footnotes ("Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown"), the index of an unwritten book ("The Index").