SPIKE MAGAZINE

Chris Hall revisits J.G. Ballard’s childhood and finds the future in the past The opening of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) has young Jim watching British war propaganda films with fellow choristers in the crypt of the Holy Trinity church

Chris Hall Burksey: The Autobiography of a Football God – Peter Morfoot See all books byPeter Morfoot at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com This has got cult classic written all over it. Burksey is the spoof autobiography of Tristan Stephen

Chris Hall Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album – Matthew Robertson See all books about Factory Records at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com In the late 70s, the mysterious, topographical radio waves of Joy Division’s Unknown

Chris Hall talks to JG Ballard about Millennium People, the middle classes and mail order Kalashnikovs It’s been 70 years since HG Wells published The Shape of Things to Come but there has been a far more

Chris Hall A Box Of Matches – Nicholson Baker See all books by Nicholson Baker at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Or, Something Funny Happened On The Way Down To Tie My Shoelaces. Yes, after a few (highly idiosyncratic) non-fiction

Chris Hall talks to Patricia Duncker about sex, death and sending porn through the German postal system Speaking from her home in Aberystwyth on the day of the Stop the War rally, Patricia Duncker is excitedly bellowing

Chris Hall meets legendary designer Peter Saville “Peter Saville drives a skoda”. The appalling idea scared him off of renting one when it was offered in place of the VW Polo that he’d ordered.

Chris Hall serves up a slice of Will Self with the publication of his second collection of journalism, Feeding Frenzy Chris Hall: First off, congratulations on the birth of your new son, Luther. Will Self: Yeah, little baby Luther. He

Even though he’s been dead for seven years, the savage political satire of Bill Hicks makes more sense than ever. Chris Hall spreads the word. If you mention to any intelligent individual under the age of 25 that you saw Nirvana and The Pixies

Chris Hall London – Peter Ackroyd See all books by Peter Ackroyd at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Those who have read Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem will recall that the word golem comes from the medieval Jewish

Chris Hall talks about the dark side of capitalism and the deceptions of reality with J.G. Ballard Walking along Oxford Street the day after I finished reading JG Ballard’s new novel, Super-Cannes, it struck me, literally, the total acceptance

Chris Hall has a lively conversation with Will Self Although, at 39, Will Self is approaching mid-life and he can see the “lowering storm of age and extinction” ahead of him, there is still certainly nothing in his prose or his physiognomy

Chris Hall finds out why J.G. Ballard thinks Crash is the first film of the 21st century One week before David Cronenberg’s Crash opened in the UK at the beginning of June, the normally reclusive author J.G. Ballard appeared at a regional

Chris Hall gives the lowdown on Marie Darrieussecq Who’s Marie Darrieussecq? The 28-year-old author of debut novel Pig Tales, which has taken France by storm. The book took just 24-hours to be accepted after she sent her unsolicited manuscript

Chris Hall gives a crash course in the fiction of JG Ballard Existing somewhere between the manifest edifices of Crash and Empire Of The Sun, the rest of JG Ballard’s fiction glides and grinds like vast tectonic plates.

Chris Hall on the significance of names in fiction and film The importance of names in literature has nowhere been more typified than in recent attempts to pin down the elusive etymology of Beckett’s Godot. Following that farrago you can