Rushing to Paradise

Rating:
Summary: An important book about Political Correctness.
Review: An extremely important work and one that should be read by anyone interested in the uses of Political Correctness for repression. In ordinary circumstances a person like Dr. Barbara would either remain harmless or would swiftly be judged an intellectual fraud and a homocidal maniac. What this woman succeeds in doing, however, is to use the "liberal" predilections of other people against them to contrive dystopic circumstances that are extraordinary, putting her outside the possibility of judgment and allowing her to murder at will. The models for Dr. Barbara derive from such ancient sources as the myth of the Women of Lemnos and such modern ones as Moby Dick: she is a feminist Captain Ahab and is endowed with all of Melville's madman's persuasiveness and executive skills. A brilliant book, which belongs on the same shellf with Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Lord of the Flies.

Rating:
Summary: Ballard bites off a big chunk with this one
Review: And I'm glad to say it was easy for him to chew. This is a perceptive and actually pretty nasty take on the more extreme ends of enviromentalism and feminism, the points where the former becomes psychosis and the latter becomes sexism of a virulent and violent sort.

What I love most about Ballard is his willingness to probe the darker corners of the human psyche. It's a rare gift to want to explore these places, let alone use them to comment on our society. This is an excellent book and worth your cash!

Rating:
Summary: Not your average book
Review: I really liked Rushing to Paradise and I don't see how it generated such negative reviews; except to say that it IS a "politically incorrect" book. Author Ballard has strange, almost hallucinatory descriptive powers which he delivers in cool, matter of fact language. Above all, the book resonates with a twilight of the gods atmosphere. Maybe not for everyone, but this doesn't make it a bad book. Quite the contrary.