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Study 018 - Billennium (Patreon)

Published:
2022-11-11 01:41:45
Imported:
2026-06
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Squeeze in and join us as we discuss J.G. Ballard's tale of overpopulation, Billennium!

Special thanks to our reader, Erik Peabody! Check out his reading of Pickman's Model now! Or pick up this episode's closing track from Viking Guitar - Obliterator!

Next up: The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster!

Comments

Brian Pitt

Coming to this very late, but on this theme I really recommend “Stand on Zanzibar” by John Brunner. It’s about overpopulation but also one of the first sci fi books with chapters entirely devoted to revealing the setting (through in-world newspapers, advertisements, etc.). I read the copy in my father’s library when I was 16 and I still go back to it frequently.

Jeppe Mulich

Impossible to hear this episode and not think of Hong Kong's notorious subdivided flats. In the words of local rapper Yuri Tomiyama, "7k for a house like a cell and you really think we out here scared of jail"

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

The situation where the press of people keeps anybody from moving independently of the crowed is one of my greatest fears. I’m 5 foot nothing, and twice in my life I’ve been picked up off my feet and carried along by the press of a crowd. It’s an absolutely terrifying experience. To this day I am unable to go to Knott’s Scary Farm, even though a bunch of my friends work it as haunt monsters. One year we decided to go to the early showing of The Hanging and the Elvira Show had to be canceled so there were just too many people trying to go watch something in that case. The first time it happened I was in seventh grade, and there was some kind of emergency so the entire school had to be evacuated and literally everybody was filing down this wide path that went down a hill, and normally there was plenty of room to duck and weave between people… But not that time.

Steve

The movie of Ballard's High Rise with Tom Hiddleston ploughs a similar furrow, but is more political and well worth watching.

Damon Bowles

Mention of Hong Kong here got me thinking of Chungking Mansions back in the 90s. Was several square blocks of dripping, dark, subdivided ad infinitum highrise claustrophobia.

Ben A

Ballard is by far one of the most lucid and prescient science fiction (more dystopian future) writers of his cohort. I’m so happy you all finally found space (pun intended) to cover this tale. The one element that always is a bit of horror for me is the implication that education and the visual & performing arts must be largely dead or substantially changed in this future. If the characters are amazed by photos of nearly empty concert halls and museums, then the implication is that even these spaces are overcrowded. I envision a world where every art museum is like the Mona Lisa room at the Louvre. How do people attend school or college in a world like this? Where is there room to perform a play or rehearse a concert? It’s truly chilling in so many ways beyond what we are shown in the text. Looking forward to you all covering more like this!

Its Mr Bat Man To You

To Chris’s point, these situations happen now but are almost entirely voluntary. Humans choose to live in these horrible conditions. It begs the question, what do they fear from moving somewhere less populous? For me personally, there is almost nothing scarier than crowds of humans.

Erik Gordon

Makes my 432 sq ft house seem huge.

It's a Ghost.

This story would be Henry David Thoreau’s absolute worst nightmare! Specifically, it reminds me of a passage in Walden where he says, “At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story.”

Jason Thompson

Thank you for this great episode — you really brought home the scariness of this story, which is fairly subdued on the page. I love all of Ballard’s work that I’ve read. You should read his novel “The Drowned World” or “The Crystal World” (arguably better than Drowned World though less relevant to climate change) or maybe even “The Drought” (which reads like an origin story for the Mad Max universe). Heck— I’m gonna say it, even “The Wind from Nowhere” is good! It doesn’t have the depth of his later novels and basically it’s just a bunch of descriptions of wind destroying stuff, but OH what descriptions!

Jason Thompson

Also, if you really want to jump into the deep end of some old problematic political sci-fi you should read “The inverted Man.” Or Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” (which was assigned to me in high school but I very much doubt would be in a HS textbook today).

Rafe Ball

If you think having a broom closet as a room to live in seems claustrophobic, UK television has that beat. In the mid 1980s a regular staple on the BBC had a man trapped in a broom cupboard (not closet, this is the BBC) which also housed an TV production studio. Not only that, it was also home to a gopher who chittered incessantly, and the poor insane fellow believed it was talking to him and could understand its squeaks as English. And this was on children’s television! Chris, ask Rachel about Gordon the Gopher, she’s sure to remember this piece of televisual dystopian nightmare.

Jason of the K

Seems to me that there are places on earth where folks live like this voluntarily. Those coffin hotels in Japan (?), just about any apartment instagram feed from San Francisco or New York, heck, that tragic halloween stampede in South Korea. I am curious where all the people come from though, for a "lets ask these nice girls to shack up with us" tale there is zero romance, or even a suggestion of it :P

Jim Cannon

The whole time I am envisioning these vast farmlands and collectivist agricultural communes struggling to produce enough food for all these people. Probably still crowded, but there has to be space for the plants to grow. Move out there, you fools!

Victor Badger

I've spent most of my life in rural Pennsylvania, and I can honestly say that while cities have a lot of great stuff going on, I'll stick to Mayberry, thanks. I didn't like being around too many humans before the pandemic and it's gotten no better over the past couple of years.

Ethan Cordray

As an exercise in anxiety, this story works tremendously. As any sort of "realistic" imagining of a dystopian global future, it falls a bit flat. Population growth has turned out to be self-correcting. Not just because modernized industrial nations have birth control, but because high-density urban life heavily disincentivizes childbearing. That's why we see ultra-low fertility rates and impending negative population growth in places like South Korea, Japan, and China. Global population growth is driven by less-developed regions like subsaharan Africa (and as Chris mentioned, it's projected to taper off in the next few decades). Highly dense urbanized places grow because they attract economic migrants, not because of new children. So while there are in fact specific places like the city that Ballard describes, they exist not because of global population growth, but because of the concentration of economic opportunity into very limited places. It's money (and horrible urban governance, like bad housing policies) that causes hellish urban overcrowding, not kids. And people do really hate living like that, and they move away as soon as they're able to. Over time, this leads to outflows and development of lower-density alternative economic centers, just like in the US people are moving out of San Francisco and Los Angeles to find better opportunities in Texas and the Midwest. In short: *overcrowding* is a real problem, but it's a solvable one. "Overpopulation* is not a problem, and even if you think it is, it's going to solve itself.

Citizen Cain, PhD

Listening to this while stuck in Washington DC gridlock on my commute home tonight, especially the commentary about people being able to get used to anything, was what I like to call "experiential learning".

Aaron La Vene

The Pickmans Model episode was the second best next to autopsy. I think it captured many lovecraftian themes wonderfully and told a fascinating story in doing so. Yah it wasn’t the exact same story obviously but it was a really cool story of its own sticking to many lovecraftian themes.. unlike dreams of the witch house which went against so much of what lovecraft was trying to convey, man that one was awful compared to Pickmans model.

Haylen Brenagh

Like Chad, I got stuck in a crowd once - so stuck I couldn't lift my arms up, we were literally shoulder to shoulder. it's true, you just move with the flow of the crowd and hope nobody falls down. This was during the first Obama Inauguration on 4th Street in Washington DC. Once out of that pack of people, we thought of going into the tunnel under the Mall to get closer to the Capitol, but I was shook, so I balked. Lucky for us too; those people were stuck underground for hours during and after the ceremony, I heard later. Still shuddering.

Warwick Davey

Hi Chris and Chad, I've been listening to your podcast for about 5 years now and have thoroughly enjoyed both the tales themselves and the in depth discussions of themes and authors. I've dabbled a little in writing of my own weird stories and though I feel like I have plenty of fresh ideas, life gets in the way of me getting them onto paper. I have layed out some of these ideas with my wife and though she's not a fan of the genre, she nods along courteously. Fast forward to now and we have a 7 week old baby girl and life is full of joy. During our parental leave we embarked on several journeys of new tv shows, one of which was White Lotus. Basically it's several stories of people at a tropical holiday resort that intertwine. Now my wife thought it was a drama story pure and simple. But my experience was much stranger. I felt that there was something unusual and slightly disturbing below the surface, though not in a supernatural sense. Was the strangeness purely from my experience with the show? Or was it so subtle that only someone steeped in the lore of the 'weird' could perceive it? Does the 'weirdness' of a story lie in the events/characters or is it in the anticipation and expectation of weirdness in the reader? Am I going mad and now everything seems strange?! I need to write some of this down before it's too late.....

Richard Maier Art

Regarding Del Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities", I've only watched The Autopsy so far as well and thought it was amazing. I'd love to hear you guys cover the Shea story. Does anyone know if the story has been previously adapted for film? After I read it, I was wracking my memory for what movie was influenced by it, but came up blank. The scene of the alien spreading out filaments to the trapped miners seems so familiar.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

The idea that folks in Japan work crazy long hours is, I'm very happy to say, no longer true. Heck, a recent study puts the US at #16 on the list of most working hours while Japan sits at #43. It is very true that the population is rapidly aging and fewer children are being born. The way is being cleared for a much more expansive immigration policy. Lots of television shows with people visiting Japan, coming to Japan to learn, and folks who come here to work. I think things are likely to level off. There is no doubt that living spaces in Japan are smaller than many other places. Another study shows the average Japanese home being 1023 square feet. Of course the UK average is 808 square feelt, so...

Kenneth Morin

Long time listener first time commenter. This story really spoke to me on a personal level. You may find this information terrifying but in a foolhardy attempt to save money for (hopefully) my own house I'm currently splitting a 3 bedroom apartment with 6 other people. I have an 8 by 10 living space and its true how quickly we just accept living conditions as adequate when living in them for long enough. The story really captures the borderline subliminal claustrophobia that you learn to live with day to day. And the feeling of excitement at gaining just a few inches is something I understand waaaay too completely for my liking. At any rate thank you guys for doing what you do you've got me through many a long work night and day! I hope you have many claustrophobia free days and nights ahead of you