The Sudden Afternoon [in] Fantastic Stories, Sept 1963 Signed by J.G. Ballard

The Sudden Afternoon [in] Fantastic Stories of Imagination, September 1963 
New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1963
 
Small 8vo., decorative wraps with a full-colour image by Paula McLane showing a woman sleeping in an armchair surrounded by bat-like creatures; rear cover showing an image and quotation from The Singing Sands by Prester John; advertisements to versos of wrappers; pp. [ii], 5-130, featuring numerous illustrations by Schelling, Blair and others; a very good, fresh copy, lightly nicked and scuffed at edges with mild creasing and shelfwear; pages evenly toned, as ever, with a couple of small marks to the inside of rear cover. 
 
Vol 12, no. 9 in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, where Ballard contributes his short story for the first time. This copy signed by Ballard to p. 5. 
 
Fantastic first began as an American fantasy magazine in 1952, quickly switching to the genre of Science Fiction, where it continued to run as a popular periodical until 1980. Its popularity was reinvigorated in the late 1950s by Cele Goldsmith, who took over as editor and is widely credited today with kickstarting the careers of such writers as Roger Zelazny and Ursula Le Guin. 
 
Here, Ballard’s short story The Sudden Afternoon explores concepts of identity, with an Indian doctor and his wife (dying from a terminal illness) transplant their psyches into the bodies of another couple. Ballard’s wife Helen died suddenly at the age of just 34 one year after the work was published, and although this story predates that event, her death later led Ballard to write a series of works on a similar subject, namely a series of strange short fictions where “nature had committed a terrible crime”. “If two and two make five” he claimed in one interview, “then somehow my wife’s death could be explained”.