Ah so its not actually a novel, which i thought it was!
" collection of "condensed
novels" (actually destructured short stories and experimental pieces)"
some interesting story titles there too!
Um, that's putting it mildly....
As for it not being a novel... well, it is and it isn't. It is somewhere between being a "fix-up" and an original novel. As I understand it, it was conceived as a single entity, but as it is very episodic, various chapters were published independently (and can so stand, though together the thing becomes immensely more powerful... not to say coherent....)
But Ballard himself certainly viewed it as a novel, as I recall, and it has been viewed as such since. Like several other sf novels of the period (Moorcock's
Breakfast in the Ruins and
The Final Programme; Disch's
334; etc.), it was published in sections, often out of order, sometimes quite deliberately, as an artistic experiment. But it certainly has the unity of a modern if unconventional novel.
In either case, I'd say it is one of his most brilliant, if difficult, books. Funnily enough, though, except for "The Recognition", which I read about four years before in Ellison's anthology
Dangerous Visions, parts of
The Atrocity Exhibition were the first Ballard I ever read... and the introduction certainly took....
