Hello America

Hello America is a science fiction novel by JG Ballard, first published in 1980.

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Though the exact date is never specifically mentioned in the book, internal references suggest that it takes place around 2080 AD, (though dates as early as 2070 or so have been suggested) several generations after an ecological collapse rendered North America virtually unlivable. Most of the population was evacuated to Europe and Asia. The bulk of the novel takes place when an European steam Ship, the SS Apollo, sails to America to try and find out what's causing increased radioactive fallout in England.

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In typical Ballardian fashion, each of the crew members has a secret agenda, and is basically a pawn of their own psychological yearnings, both for destruction and glory. Most of the Apollo's crew are descended from expatriate Americas - the protagonist is a 20-ish boy who grew up in the American Ghetto in Dublin, for instance - and have become mostly assimilated into European society, but still feel some vague draw to the abandoned continent to the west.

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Thanks to the damming up of the Bering Strait by the Soviet Union in the 1990s, global weather paterns were changed. The Russians were now able to grow grain as far north as the arctic circle, while the normal clockwise currents in the Pacific Ocean reversed themselves. A massive drought began, and it never rained again east of the Rocky Mountains. The opposite problem was true west of the Rockies. Rather inexplicably, much of coastal Asia freezes over.

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Though the plot is a straightforward adventure yarn - quite unusual for Ballard - it's real motivation is a subtle parody on American culture. For instance, the final president of the United States is the former governor Jerry Brown of California, who was still a promising face in American Politics at the time. His small, ironic role in the novel represents both the triumph and ultimate failure of west coast liberalism of the late cold war era: When faced with a massive ecological crisis that threatens (And indeed ultimately destroys) the nation, his solution is to built a large youth center in Washington (A twice-life-size fiberglass replica of the Taj Mahal), and then abandon the country so he can devote himself to self-improvement. (We're told he dies at age 114 in a Buddist Monestery in a glaciated Japan.)

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Eventually the Apollo Expedition comes across survivors from the previous expedition 30 years earlier. One of these survivors - clearly insane - has taken to calling himself "President Charles Manson," but none of the Apollo's crew get the reference. And why should they? The Manson Killings were 120 years earlier, in a completely different world.

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In the end, it is implied that Europe needs America, if only as a place where the darker elements of the Western Mindset can be allowed to play themselves out without inconveniencing decent people. There is a kind of rebirth that re-established something akin to the old order, allowing insanity to be sublimated out in small doses to everyone, rather than bottled up in one person where it proves to be really really dangerous. Possibly for the first time ever, Nuclear Weapons are used for a constructive purpose, and the 'New World Order' that arises from the events of the book contains both promise of a better future, and the understated vague promise/threat of fantasmagoric horrors to come, though presumably in smaller doses.

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The book has been panned by Ballard fans, who consider it uninspired and entirely too accessible to be considered part of his principle cannon, but in fact, this too is by design. While the book is definitely unique among Ballard's novels, it is intended as a parody not only of American culture of the time, but also of the American penchant for simpleminded adventure stories with postapocalyptic elements thrown in.

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