Set in the year 2145 in a post-apocalyptic and unrecognisable London, The Drowned World is a setting of tropical temperatures, flooding and accelerated evolution. Ballard's story follows the biologist Dr Robert Kerans and his struggles against the devolutionary impulses of the environment. As part of a scientific survey unit sent to map the flora and fauna in the boiling lagoon, the tranquility and banality of their role is soon upset by the onset of strange dreams which increasingly plague the survivors' minds. Amidst talk of the army and scientific team moving north, Hardman, the only other commissioned member of the unit, flees the lagoon and instead heads south, a search team unable to find his whereabouts. When the other inhabitants of the lagoon finally flee the searing sun and head north, Kerans and two associates, the beautiful but reclusive Beatrice Dahl and fellow scientist Dr Bodkin, settle down in the swamp into an isolated existence. Kerans is still tormented by his psycho-analytical tendencies, ever analysing and debating the regression of the environment into a neo-Triassic period, but the brief quiet is ended by the arrival of Strangman. The leader of a team of pirates seeking out and looting treasures within the deep, Strangman defies the remaining civilised reasons of Kerans' mind and disrupts the world that the survivors have grown to know. When Strangman and his team drain the lagoon and expose the city beneath, both Kerans and Bodkin are disgusted; the latter attempts to blow up the flood defences and re-flood the area, but without success. With Kerans and Beatrice resigned to his fate, Strangman pursues Bodkin and kills him in revenge. Strangman and his team grow tired and suspicious of Dr Kerans, and with Beatrice now under his web of control, Kerans is imprisoned and subjected to bizarre and tribalistic rituals intended to kill him. Kerans survives, though severely weakened by the ordeals, and attempts to save Beatrice from her own imprisonment, to little avail. With the doctor and Beatrice facing the guns of Strangman and his men and no apparent excuse, the army returns to save them. With no reason or evidence to prosecute Strangman, the authorities co-operate with the captain, and Kerans once more grows frustrated by the inaction, finally taking a stand and succeeding in re-flooding the lagoon where Bodkin had failed. Wounded and weak, the doctor flees the lagoon and heads south without aim, meeting the frail and blind figure of Hardman along the way. Though he aids Hardman back to some amount of strength, he soon continues onwards on his travels south, with little idea of an aim or objective, a "second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn Sun".
Themes
As with many of Ballard's later works, the novel depicts characters who seize on apocalyptic or chaotic breakdowns in civilization as opportunities to pursue new modes of perception, unconscious urges, or systems of meaning. Writer Travis Eldborough stated that Ballard's work, and the novel in particular, allows us to "ask whether our sense of self—and of self as independent, sovereign, irrevocable—is itself a construction, and a temporary one." Critic Brian Baker states that The Drowned World "explores the deep implications of time, space, psychology and evolutionary biology in order to dismantle anthropocentric narratives and, in turn, open up alternative ways of experiencing, and conceiving of, contemporary human subjectivity." Scholar Jim Clarke stated that in the novel and its 1966 successor The Crystal World, "Ballard's solitary protagonists traverse liminal states, often as psychological as physical, in which civilization recedes to the status of memory, and existence comes to be dominated and defined by the environment."
Reception
Following the novel's release, writer Kingsley Amis called Ballard "one of the brightest new stars in post-war fiction," and described the book as containing "an oppressive power reminiscent of Conrad." Galaxy Science Fiction writer Algis Budrys mocked The Drowned World as "a run, hide, slither, grope and die book". In a retrospective piece for The Telegraph, writer Will Self noted that Ballard's work was unappreciated during his life, and that following a critical reappraisal of his work, "The Drowned World shows him to be the most important British writer of the late 20th century." Writer Martin Amis states that "it is the measure of creative radicalism that he welcomes these desperate dystopias with every atom of his being," but criticized the novel's perfunctory plotting, stating that "We conclude that Ballard is quite unstimulated by human interaction – unless it takes the form of something inherently weird, like mob atavism or mass hysteria. What excites him is human isolation."
