The Terminal Beach

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The Terminal Beach is one of Ballard's most brilliant collections of short stories, ranging from the title story's disturbing picture of an abandoned atomic testing island in the Pacific to the shocking Oedipal fantasy of "The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon". At the heart of the stories lies the bitter paradox that the extraordinary creative power of man's imagination is matched only by his reckless instinct for destruction. Contents: - A Question Re-entry - The Drowned Giant - End-Game - The Illuminated Man - The Reptile Enclosure - The Delta at Sunset - The Terminal Beach - Deep End - The Volcano Dances - Billennium - The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon - The Lost Leonardo Front cover illustration by David Pelham