"Billenium" is a short story by J. G. Ballard

J. G. Ballard

James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...

 first published in the January 1962 edition of Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...

(Volume 36, Number 1) and in the Billennium collection. It later appeared in The Terminal Beach

The Terminal Beach

The Terminal Beach is a collection of science fiction short stories by the British author J. G. Ballard, published in 1964.-British edition:...

(1964), and The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1

The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1

The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 is a short-story collection by J. G. Ballard, published in 2006.The collection is the first installment of the J. G. Ballard's complete collection, followed by The Complete Short Stories of J. G...

(2006).

With a dystopian ambience, "Billennium" explores themes similar to Ballard's earlier story "The Concentration City

The Concentration City

"The Concentration City" is a dystopian short story by British author J. G. Ballard, first published, under the title "Build-Up" in New Worlds volume 19 number 55 in January 1957. It was reprinted in the collections Billennium and Chronopolis and later, under its revised title, in The Disaster Area...

", of space shortages and over-crowding.

Setting

The story is set in the future (possibly c. 21st century - see billennium) where the world is becoming increasingly overpopulated, with a population of around 20 billion. Most of its inhabitants live in crowded central cities in order to preserve as much land as possible outside of them for farming, and as a result the world does not have a food problem, nor wars - since all governments devote themselves to addressing the problems caused by overpopulation. In the city inhabited by the two protagonists, John Ward and Henry Rossiter, there is a mass shortage of space and the people live in small cellular rooms where they are charged by ceiling space, the legal minimum decreasing to 3.5 square metres (4.2 sq yd) per person. The city streets are enormously crowded, resulting in occasional pedestrian congestions that last days at a time. Most old and historical buildings have been taken down to make way for new battery homes or divided into hundreds of small cubicle

Cubicle

Тhe cubicle, cubicle desk, office cubicle or cubicle workstation is a partially enclosed workspace, separated from neighboring workspaces by partitions that are usually tall...

s.

Plot

The story revolves around Ward and Rossiter's combined discovery of a secret, larger-than-average room adjacent to their rented cubicle. As the two bask in the extra personal space that they have never known, things become complicated when they allow two other close friends to share the space, and the ensuing snowball effect of their invitees bringing family to live in the room. In the end, the "luxurious" space comes to be the same type of crowded cubicle that they were trying to escape from in the first place.