The Drought
The Burning World is a 1964 novel by the English writer J. G. Ballard, first published in the United States by Berkley Medallion. A revised British edition was published in 1965 under the title The Drought.
Set in a near-future world devastated by drought after industrial pollution disrupts the earth's water cycle, the novel follows the physician Charles Ransom as he moves through collapsing social and physical landscapes. It is commonly discussed as part of Ballard's early cycle of catastrophe novels and, retrospectively, as an early work of climate fiction.
Critics have read the novel in terms of ecological collapse, waste and scavenging, and the uneasy psychological accommodation of catastrophe. Contemporary reviewers including James Colvin and Judith Merril praised its originality and visionary atmosphere, while later commentators have emphasized its hallucinatory treatment of disaster and its focus on characters adapting themselves to ruined environments.
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