“Soon It Would Be Too Hot”: Revisiting The Drowned World

ABSTRACT:We have entered an era in which we are threatened simultaneously by a revivified cold war and the ongoing calamity of climate change. I argue in this article that now is a good time to revisit J. G. Ballard’s 1962 novel The Drowned World. In its intertextual landscape, we find two real ruined cities (Hiroshima and New Orleans) that symbolize our two concurrent human-made eschatological threats. And revisiting The Drowned World now offers a timely reminder of the dangers of an anthropocentric worldview. Furthermore, this postapocalyptic story presents at least two ethically sound responses to the human-made crises we are complicit in creating. The Drowned World remains as relevant now as when it was written more than half a century ago.