55:"Now: Zero" is told from the first-person perspective of an office worker at an insurance company. He discovers he can kill people by writing about them, or their deaths. He uses those powers to eliminate anyone he perceives to be an obstacle at his workplace, but the spree of inexplicable deaths eventually becomes too much for the company, which shuts down. At the end of the story, the main plot twist revolves around the main character declaring that the readers of the story should perish as well.
71:". Gregory Stephenson listed the story as one of several works of Ballard who focus on the "extremes of egotism" and the resulting self-destructive consequences. Paul March-Russell observed that it is one of Ballard's works that show his "preference for plot acts as a springboard for both play and invention".
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wrote that the story "a playful, metafictional piece biting its own tail and ultimately resulting in the death... of the reader, is another successful example of
Ballard's use of
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describe the story as "about as inconsequential a story as
Ballard has published... interesting only as an exercise in narrative voice". Likewise, James Goddard and
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listed the story as one of
Ballard's early works "which are too feeble and derivative to find equivalents in his later work".
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Out of the Night and Into the Dream: A Thematic Study of the
Fiction of J.G. Ballard
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The premise of the story has been described as similar to the 2003 Japanese manga
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The
Writing Machine: J. G. Ballard in Modern and Postmodern Short Story Theory
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The
Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1
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Strange
Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967
228:John Boston; Damien Broderick (15 January 2013).
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35:, released in 1959 in the December issue of
261:. Bran's Head Books Limited. p. 42.
153:. Oxford University Press. pp. 15–.
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258:J. G. Ballard, the First Twenty Years
234:. Wildside Press LLC. pp. 141–.
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126:. Wildside Press LLC. pp. 33–.
201:March-Russell, Paul (2012-01-01).
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314:Short stories by J. G. Ballard
120:Peter Brigg (1 January 1985).
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282:Sellars, Simon (2008-04-16).
63:In his biography of Ballard,
16:Short story by J. G. Ballard
284:""Now: Zero" vs Death Note"
180:. ABC-CLIO. pp. 169–.
174:Gregory Stephenson (1991).
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147:Michel Delville (1998).
255:J. G. Ballard (1976).
41:. It is included in
324:Fiction about crime
319:1959 short stories
268:978-0-905220-03-1
241:978-1-4344-4746-3
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101:Fourth wall
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308:Categories
293:2021-02-17
288:Ballardian
107:References
88:Death Note
59:Reception
21:Now: Zero
95:See also
31:author
29:British
23:" is a
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