NONFICTION - May 19, 1996

A USER’S GUIDE TO THE MILLENNIUM: Essays and Reviews by J.G. Ballard (Picador USA: $23; 304 pp.). “A User’s Guide to the Millennium” won’t add anything to British novelist J.G. Ballard’s reputation, for most of the very short pieces collected here are written in the mode of the hurried, cynical journalist, not that of the attentive novelist; most, too, were written for British readers, with Ballard seeming more intent on parroting stereotypes about the United States than shedding new light.

On four subjects Ballard is worth reading--surrealism (he’s a big fan of Dali particularly), William Burroughs, China (though much of the material echoes “Empire of the Sun”) and science fiction in general--but the rest is little more than filler.