"Minus One" is a short story by British author J. G. Ballard; it was first published in the June 1963 edition of Science Fantasy (Volume 20, Number 59). [1] It was later reprinted in the 1967 collection The Disaster Area , and then later in the larger The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 anthology (2006).
"Minus One" is set in Green Hill Asylum, whose motto is "There is a Green Hill Far, Far Away". It provides a private prison where the rich can incarcerate "miscreant or unfortunate relatives whose presence would otherwise be a burden or embarrassment". Security rather than treatment comes first and the asylum boasted that no-one had ever escaped, that is until the disappearance of a patient called Hinton. Thorough searches are conducted and staff questioned but no trace of him can be found. Dr. Mellinger, the director of the asylum leads the investigation and it transpires that nobody can remember much about him at all. Dr Mellinger realises that the patients are not being treated as individuals and decides that from then on the regime of Green Hill will change to take more interest in the individual. Still the disappearance of Hinton remains unexplained; Dr. Mellinger looks at Hinton's file and realises that it is the only evidence of him ever having existed. Fortuitously the file is then "lost" and the director announces that the disappearance was an administrative error and that Hinton had never really existed. All are happy until a visitor arrives at the hospital to see her husband. It is Mrs Hinton. As she is obviously suffering from delusions in need of treatment she is forcibly admitted as the story ends on the phrase "minus two".
In 1991 it was made into a short film by Simon Brooks, [2] first shown at the Viareggio Film Festival. [3]
Crash is a novel by English author J. G. Ballard, first published in 1973 with cover designed by Bill Botten. It follows a group of car-crash fetishists who become sexually aroused by staging and participating in car accidents, inspired by the famous crashes of celebrities.
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist and short-story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media. Ballard first became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962). He later courted controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968), and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.
The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, commonly referred to as Arkham Asylum, is a fictional forensic psychiatric hospital appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly in stories featuring the superhero Batman. It first appeared in Batman #258, written by Dennis O'Neil with art by Irv Novick. Located in Gotham City, the asylum houses patients who are criminally insane, as well as select prisoners with unusual medical requirements that are beyond a conventional prison's ability to accommodate. Its high-profile patients are often members of Batman's rogues gallery.
High-Rise is a 1975 novel by British writer J. G. Ballard. The story describes the disintegration of a luxury high-rise building as its affluent residents gradually descend into violent chaos. As with Ballard's previous novels Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974), High-Rise inquires into the ways in which modern social and technological landscapes could alter the human psyche in provocative and hitherto unexplored ways. It was adapted into a film of the same name, in 2015, by director Ben Wheatley.
The Atrocity Exhibition is an experimental novel of linked stories or "condensed novels" by British writer J. G. Ballard.
The Wind from Nowhere is a science fiction novel by English author J. G. Ballard. Published in 1962, it was his debut novel. He had previously published only short stories.
The Danvers State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum, was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts. It was built in 1874, and opened in 1878, under the supervision of prominent Boston architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee, on an isolated site in rural Massachusetts. It was a multi-acre, self-contained psychiatric hospital designed and built according to the Kirkbride Plan.
Deep sleep therapy (DST), also called prolonged sleep treatment or continuous narcosis, is a discredited form of ostensibly psychiatric treatment in which drugs are used to keep patients unconscious for a period of days or weeks. The controversial practice led to the death of 25 patients in Chelmsford Private Hospital in New South Wales, Australia, from the early 1960s to late 1970s.
Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer J. G. Ballard published in 1976.
The Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, United States, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The site was designed by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson in concert with the famed landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the late 1800s, incorporating a system of treatment for people with mental illness developed by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride known as the Kirkbride Plan. Over the years, as mental health treatment changed and resources were diverted, the buildings and grounds began a slow deterioration. By 1974, the last patients were removed from the historic wards. On June 24, 1986, the former Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane was added to the National Historic Landmark registry. In 2006, the Richardson Center Corporation was formed to restore the buildings.
Fulbourn Hospital is a mental health facility located between the Cambridgeshire village of Fulbourn and the Cambridge city boundary at Cherry Hinton, about 5 miles (8 km) south-east of the city centre. It is managed by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. The Ida Darwin Hospital site is situated behind Fulbourn Hospital. It is run and managed by the same trust, with both hospitals sharing the same facilities and staff pool.
"The Voices of Time" is a dystopian science fiction short story by British author J. G. Ballard. It was first published in the October 1960 edition of New Worlds, and later in the 1962 collection The Voices of Time and Other Stories. It is an early example of the Inner Space type of story which drove the New Wave movement in the 1960s. Its primary theme is one which was common in the New Wave, that of entropy and the breakdown of all things.
Fragile is a 2005 Spanish-British horror film directed by Jaume Balagueró.
"Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968), by J. G. Ballard, is a short story written in the style of a scientific report that catalogues a series of psychological experiments intended to measure the psychosexual appeal of the Californian politician Ronald Reagan, who then was governor of the state of California, and also a candidate for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, which he lost to Richard M. Nixon.
Asylum is a 1972 British anthology horror film made by Amicus Productions. The film was directed by Roy Ward Baker and produced by Milton Subotsky. Robert Bloch wrote the script, adapting four of his own short stories.
"Zone of Terror" is a short story by British author J. G. Ballard, first appearing in the March 1960 edition of New Worlds. It later appeared in the 1962 collection The Voices of Time and Other Stories, in The Disaster Area (1967) and The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 (2006).
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
Now: Zero is a short story by British author J. G. Ballard, released in 1959 in the December issue of Science Fantasy. It is included in The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1.
"Welcome to Briarcliff" is the first episode of the second season of the anthology television series American Horror Story, which premiered on October 17, 2012, on the cable network FX. In its original airing, the episode was watched by 3.85 million viewers, the largest audience of the franchise thus far, 2.8 million of which were from the 18–49 demographic.