still, this book was not nearly as scary as The Atrocity Exhibition, which kept me compulsively flipping pages, part of me hoping no one on the bus was reading over my shoulder. Ballard's notes are probably more interesting than the book itself, but the surreal snippets of prose are akin to nails being pounded into your head (if such a ridiculous analogy may be employed). where is the world going, and do we want to be on it when it gets there? if Ballard is a visionary of the future, i'd like to take the next off ramp. yet, as Ballard knows, we will be too caught in the headlights to escape what our own hands have created.

what i primarily got from this was the complex dealings of new religious movements, their organization and foibles, and insight into the type of personality that starts their own framework for finding meaning. Crowley comes off as a battered human struggling to make sense of the world, his own way.

i chased this little book down with The Information, which I found tedious and drearily long. too many digressions. too much too much. still stylishly written, but poorly executed.