Minus One (short story)

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"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).

Plot summary

"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".

Film adaptation

In 1991 it was made into a short film by Simon Brooks,^[2] first shown at the Viareggio Film Festival.^[3]

References

^ "JG Ballard Book Cover Scans: 1962-63". The Terminal Collection. Retrieved January 6, 2009.
^ "Ballardian: the World of J.G. Ballard » Simon Brook's Minus One". www.ballardian.com. Archived from the original on 2008-03-31.
^ "Minus One [1991] @ EOFFTV". www.eofftv.com. Archived from the original on 2005-01-16.

External links

Minus One title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Online text
Minus One at IMDb
Simon Brook’s Minus One

v t e Works by J. G. Ballard
Novels	The Wind from Nowhere (1961) The Drowned World (1962) The Burning World (1964) The Crystal World (1966) The Atrocity Exhibition (1969) Crash (1973) Concrete Island (1974) High-Rise (1975) The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) Hello America (1981) Empire of the Sun (1984) The Day of Creation (1987) Running Wild (1988) The Kindness of Women (1991) Rushing to Paradise (1994) Cocaine Nights (1996) Super-Cannes (2000) Millennium People (2003) Kingdom Come (2006)
Short stories	"Mobile" (1957) "The Concentration City" (1957) "Track 12" (1958) "Zone of Terror" (1960) "The Sound-Sweep" (1960) "The Voices of Time" (1960) "Chronopolis" (1960) "Studio 5, The Stars" (1961) "Deep End" (1961) "Mr F. is Mr F." (1961) "Billennium" (1962) "Minus One" (1963) "The Recognition" (1967) " The Day of Forever" (1967) "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) "Venus Smiles" (1971)
Short story collections	The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962) Billennium (1962) Passport to Eternity (1963) The 4-Dimensional Nightmare (1963) The Terminal Beach (1964) The Impossible Man (1966) The Overloaded Man (1967) The Disaster Area (1967) The Day of Forever (1967) Vermilion Sands (1971) Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971) Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories (1976) The Best of J. G. Ballard (1977) The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard (1978) The Venus Hunters (1980) Myths of the Near Future (1982) The Voices of Time (1985) Memories of the Space Age (1988) War Fever (1990) The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 (2006) The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 2 (2006)
Essays, reviews and interviews	A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996) Extreme Metaphors (2012)
Autobiography	Miracles of Life (2008)
Film adaptations	When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) Crash! (1971) Empire of the Sun (1987) Crash (1996) The Atrocity Exhibition (1998) Low-Flying Aircraft (2002) High-Rise (2015)

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