Memories of the Space Age

I've been reading a lot of JG Ballard recently so I was inspired by the theme to do a mock up book cover for his short story collection Memories of the Space Age. Ballard is an interesting and challenging writer. He claimed to have more in common with a surrealist painter like DeChirico than a contemporary novelist, and "Ballardian" is given to mean "dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments."

Although this may all seem a little grim, I'd encourage the viewer not to simply accept the most literal interpretation of this image. Although the subject may have befallen a catastrophe, the liberating possibilities of disaster are a central theme in Ballard's fiction. Perhaps our astronaut is simply dreaming of the gantries and runways of Cape Canaveral in the golden era of the Space Age, and will awaken to a new day, where its lost possibilities can be brought to fruition.