 In keeping with Ballard's central themes, most notably technologically-mediated masochism, these tawdry and weird technologies service the dark and hidden desires and schemes of the human castaways who occupy Vermilion Sands, typically with psychologically grotesque and physically fatal results.In his introduction to "Vermilion Sands", Ballard cites this as his favourite collection.In a similar vein, his collection "Memories of the Space Age" explores many varieties of individual and collective psychological fallout from—and initial deep archetypal motivations for—the American space exploration boom of the 1960s and 1970s.