J G Ballard is another of these writers I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time. I chose Crystal World because I’d seen it hailed as a science fiction Heart of Darkness. Upon reading Crystal World I discover that one of the few things it has in common with Conrad’s superb novel is that they both involve a trip into the jungle.
But comparisons with Heart of Darkness aside, Ballard’s 1966 novel makes an engaging read. Crystal World is the story of Edward Sanders, a doctor in a leper colony, who receives a letter from two doctor friends, a married couple (Sanders had an affair with the wife) who run a small clinic on the outskirts of a Cameroon forest. They ask him to come to Mont Royal, where something strange is happening in the jungle. At last we are here, the letter reads, The forest is the most beautiful in Africa, a house of jewels... the people.... walk through the dark forest with crowns of light on their heads... The light touches everything with diamonds and sapphires.
Dr Sanders arrives in Mont Royal to find that the poetic letter wasn’t just metaphor. The forest really is turning to jewels, undergoing some strange and rapid crystalline petrification that encompasses everything in its path - trees, animals, people. And there is evidence that it isn’t just happening in Africa, but also in the Florida everglades. And perhaps other areas yet unreported.
There are two distinct levels to this book, the apocalyptic and the personal. Crystal World is apocalyptic, certainly, but gently so. The alluring menace of the encroaching crystallisation forms an unnerving backdrop to the tale, and within this landscape of brightly shining paralysis sits the knowledge, faint but firm, that we are watching a sluggishly creeping end to our world.
Against this apocalyptic backdrop is the deeply personal story of Dr Sanders, his existentialist journey into the forest, his encounters with its denizens (people who have been twisted and altered by the jungle’s influence), and his ultimate confrontation with the deep and secret motives behind his humanitarian work.
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