J.G. Ballard died at the weekend at the age of 78. The British author was best known for Crash and Empire of the Sun, a story based on his childhood in a Japanese prison camp. In World War II, he was interned for three years by the Japanese along with his parents and his sister.
Ballard wrote more than 15 novels and many short stories, and became a full-time writer in the 1960s. Crash was infamous for its subject matter - sexual desire stimulated by car accidents and went on to become a controversial David Cronenberg movie. Later novels such as Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Millennium People were also praised by the literary world.
Ballard’s short story collection, Vermilion Sands, has also been widely acclaimed. Set in a desert town, the stories feature technologies such as bizarre poetry-composing computers and self-painting canvasses. Another short story collection, Memories of the Space Age, explores the psychological fallout from the space exploration frenzy of the 1960s and 1970s.
Ballard published his first novel, The Wind from Nowhere, in January 1962 but he never liked the book even though it put his foot in the door of literary world. His second novel, The Drowned World, established him as an up-and-coming figure among the so-called New Wave science fiction writers. Some people have said Ballard’s writing set the scene for Cyber Punk.
Following the death of his wife in 1964, Ballard began to write The Atrocity Exhibition. His publisher, Doubleday, was forced to destroy almost its entire original print run due to widespread criticism of the book’s content. First editions are very collectible. With chapters entitled ‘Plans for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy,’ ‘Love and Napalm: Export USA’ and ‘Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,’ The Atrocity Exhibition was considered a slur on the Kennedy legacy by the Americans. One short story is called Crash! and that became the 1973 novel – another source of controversy for opponents of Ballard. The author actually relished controversy and used it as a measure of a book’s success to some extent.
Empire of the Sun established Ballard’s position in the literary mainstream and won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Steven Spielberg turned the novel into a movie in 1987 starring Christian Bale as the young hero, Jim.
Ballard’s five most collectible books are The Atrocity Exhibition, The Drowned World, Empire of the Sun, Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and Crash.
