Now: Zero

In his biography of Ballard, Michel Delville wrote that the story "a playful, metafictional piece biting its own tail and ultimately resulting in the death... of the reader, is another successful example of Ballard's use of black humour".^[2] Gregory Stephenson listed the story as one of several works of Ballard who focus on the "extremes of egotism" and the resulting self-destructive consequences.^[3] Paul March-Russell observed that it is one of Ballard's works that show his "preference for plot acts as a springboard for both play and invention".^[4]

John Boston and Damien Broderick describe the story as "about as inconsequential a story as Ballard has published... interesting only as an exercise in narrative voice".^[5] Likewise, James Goddard and David Pringle listed the story as one of Ballard's early works "which are too feeble and derivative to find equivalents in his later work".^[6]

The premise of the story has been described as similar to the 2003 Japanese manga Death Note, since both works are about a protagonist whose supernatural power is to kill others by writing about them.^[7]

• Fourth wall