"Studio 5, The Stars" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

author

J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction which explored the relations between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass medi ...

. First appearing in the February 1961 edition of ''

Science Fantasy Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scientif ...

'' (Volume 15, Number 43); it was reprinted in the collection '' Billennium'' the following year. It later appeared in '' The Four-Dimensional Nightmare'' (1964), ''

Vermilion Sands ''Vermilion Sands'' is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer J. G. Ballard, first published in 1971. All the stories are set in an imaginary vacation resort called Vermilion Sands which suggests, among other places, Palm ...

'' (1971) and '' The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard'' (2006). The story is characterised by weird technology and a subtle

dystopian A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

ambience. Like the other stories in the collection and in other works by Ballard, the inhabitants of Vermilion Sands are disillusioned and

anomic In sociology, anomie () is a social condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards or guidance for individuals to follow. Anomie is believed to possibly evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown ...

; and artistic culture - which has evolved through exotic and baroque media - is at a slump, in what Ballard later described as a "visionary present".

References

External links

* {{J. G. Ballard Short stories by J. G. Ballard 1961 short stories Works originally published in Science Fantasy (magazine)