（外文电子版资料）Ballard, J G - Cloud Scultors.pdfVIP

file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/J.%20G.%20Ballard%20-%20Cloud%20Scultors.txt Ever play Max Ernst games by staring up at that tent of blue we prisoners call the sky? if so, I think you will appreciate this story. If not, you can always do it over again yourself by regarding Up. it takes a true architect of the nervous system and the environment, however, to not only play this game, but to play it well. 1. G. Bollard, I submit, is one of the greatest cloud-sculptors I have ever witnessed in action. So put on the appropriate piece by Debussy, and bear in mind that despite Cervantes, last years clouds are not so useless as they may seem. No. I chose to open the volume with this story, to set the Magritte-mood of reality twice removed and, perhaps because of this, twice as real. Ill double-cross you later on, I promise, but for an opener, lets start with a piece that only Mister Ballard could have written. THE CLOUD-SCULPTORS OF CORAL D J. G. Ballard All summer the cloud-sculptors would come from Vermilion Sands and sail their painted gliders above the coral towers that rose like white pagodas beside the highway to Lagoon West. The tallest of the towers was Coral D, and here the rising air above the sand-reefs was topped by swan-like clumps of fair-weather cumulus. Lifted on. the shoulders of the air above the crown of Coral D, we would carve sea- horses and unicorns, the portraits of presidents and film- stars, lizards and exotic birds. As the crowd watched from their cars, a cool rain would fall on to the dusty roofs, weep- ing from the sculptured clouds as they sailed across the desert floor towards the sun. Of all the cloud-sculptures we were to carve, the strangest were the portraits of Leonora Chanel. As I look back to that afternoon last summer when she first came in her white limousine to watch the cloud-sculptors of Coral D, I kno we barely realised how seriously this beautiful but insaii woman, regarded the sculptures floa