Vermilion Sands is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer J. G. Ballard, first published in 1971. All the stories are set in an imaginary vacation resort called Vermilion Sands which suggests, among other places, Palm Springs in southern California. The characters are generally the wealthy and disaffected, or people who make a living off them, as well as parasites of various kinds.
First edition
Ballard's Vermilion Sands story "The Singing Statues" was omitted from the first American editions.
In 1963, another Emshwiller cover illustrated the Vermilion Sands story "The Screen Game".
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist and short story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media. Ballard first became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962), but later courted political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.
Ballard's Vermilion Sands story "The Singing Statues" took the cover of the July 1962 issue of Fantastic, featuring artwork by Ed Emshwiller.
Another Emshwiller cover illustrating the Vermilion Sands story "The Screen Game" (1963)
Ballard's novelette "The Time Tombs" was the cover story on the March 1963 issue of If
The grave of the novelist J. G. Ballard. (Kensal Green Cemetery)
