The Waiting Grounds
In my collection, The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1, which came out in 2006, the next story after Manhole 69 comes the less raunchy title of Track 12 but I will discuss The Waiting Grounds here. It seems my writing scheme will be to start not on the first story I read from the collection but from the first story I read and then had the delightfully scholarly task of basing a blog around those very stories. I will eventually bring my self to recount back on those first stories starting with Prima Belladonna and working up to my present state of affairs. I'm sure I could hide all this amateurism in some attempt at following in some Ballardian time frame of no beginnings, or no discernible past, present and future, some absurd notion of unconventional time keeping anyway, but for now let's just put it down to ineptitude.
As with my previous blog, or honoured article if you will, I will continue to painstakingly draw out the meaty deliverance of the actual analysis of my understanding of Ballard's short story but instead go on about other less pressing matters, such as, waiting around. Let me explain my reasoning behind discussing this short story in preference over Track 12, you must understand that both Manhole 69 and The Waiting Ground are longer stories so I simply chickened out and read the measly six page Track 12 first, then I went into the other two longer stories. I'm sure it's more a psychological way for my head to get around reading this sizable collection of Ballard's without losing heart and reverting back to scrolling through unfunny Memes online...
Anyway, what are you waiting for, and what am I waiting for, let's get to The Waiting Grounds and try to guess what strange alien races presented in this story are watching over us and waiting for something exciting, or catastrophic, to happen to the universe. The story begins with our main character, Quaine (they must have ran out of good names in the future) arriving at a sparsely populated mining planet called Murak to take over the position at a radio observatory. The previous sole worker at the isolated observatory, called Tallis, seems a bit fishy about some aspects of the job and what might be outside the observatory in that hot desert landscape yet Quaine seems to only become more interested by the prospect of a mystery, he'll have to have something to do for the next two years working there alone.
The mystery transpires to involve two missionaries who arrived to the planet in search of some ancient celestial structure who sought Tallis to help them but soon they disappeared without any trace and Tallis has kept this a secret ever since. Quaine finally discovers this structure for himself on top of a rock plateau, it seems to resemble something like a circular Stonehenge and carved onto the Stones are names, places and dates, ranging from Biblical time up to their present time of 2217. At this point of the story things appear to be heating up and the promise of the alien owner of these stones arriving seems imminent however no aliens come and instead Quaine has an outer body experience and sees the universe go through a life cycle and senses this alien race possessing the ability to manipulate time and become one with the universe. It's all rather grand and very heavy to take in, it reminded me of some video games where characters could maybe harness the power of the universe and do silly things with it, or perhaps one day humans can toy around with the universe and play a game of cosmic soccer with pocked moons. Ballard was trying to convey the never ending cycle of the universe or something like infinite Big Bangs. Anyway he calls a mining friend over to confirm what he saw, the friend goes berserk and Quaine incinerates him with a flare gun, this being the first primary murder in the collection was amusing, stories always benefit from killings but the fight does seem a little manufactured for the plot to have some meaning, I think it had something to do with the theme of death bringing life and that continuous cycle. I think I should throw in some quotes from the book now too, just because I have the book in front of me and it will look like I picked them out specially for this.
"Tell me, Quaine, where would you like to be when the world ends?"
Here's another,
'I looked numbly at my wristwatch'
And one more,
'I am certain that whatever we are waiting for will soon arrive ... Whatever it is, it must be worth waiting for.'
Ballard doesn't flat out tell us what we should be waiting for, that would be too easy (or too damaging to our health) but he hints that it's important, nevertheless this is a fascinating story much along the line of a Lovecraft story about the fears of other mysterious intelligence among the stars or other dimensions. Another interesting quirk of the story is that Ballard refers to one language on the stones as Earth's language, maybe by the 22nd century we all speak English?
It's a different story for Ballard and I'm glad because of it, It would never do for him to be only known for a second rate Lovecraft but Ballard has stated he wanted his characters to have a sense of the enormity of the universe and to be humbled that what is out there, only by remaining still can we comprehend the endlessness of space, or you can go on a long walk, whatever suits you.
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