Sometimes the dehumanization is the point. I think that's fair to say of Ballard, certainly in the subset of his work with which I'm familiar. Sometimes you ca

Sometimes the dehumanization is the point. I think that's fair to say of Ballard, certainly in the subset of his work with which I'm familiar. Sometimes you can't use "recognizably human" characters to make the point you need to make. Peter Watts is a good example of this; not only in Blindsight but throughout his body of work, the most effective characters are typically those least recognizable as human. Such works are typically labeled as "high-concept", and I concede they can be an acquired taste. But it's not at all true to say every story is either at heart about human relationships or worthless, else this other sort of stories would never have been common enough to need naming what distinguishes them.