Born in Shanghai in 1930 James Graham Ballard lived the life of a rich expat’s son until the Japanese invaded 1941. He lived in an internment camp for three years. He told fellow writer, Ian Sinclair, that he spent the first twenty years trying to forget the experience and the next twenty years trying to remember.
His recollections resulted in the remarkable work, Empire of the Sun, which describes the war from a child’s point of view. This book was highly respected and as a result he was recognised as a leading writer in mainstream fiction. The book was turned into and interesting film by Steven Spielberg.
However, his main work was as a writer of generally disturbing science fiction. His second novel,
The Drowned World about people living in skyscrapers in a flooded world, establishing Ballard as a notable figure in the fledgling New Wave movement.
There followed a number of novels all predicting disaster, including the novel The Burning World; and a world being destroyed by crystals in The Crystal World.
The death of his wife in 1964 intensified Ballard’s dark writing. His collection of disturbing short stories, with titles such as ‘Plans for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy’, ‘Love and Napalm: Export USA’ and ‘Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan’ meant the book,The Atrocity Exhibition, was very controversial and illustrated Ballard’s growing obsession of the growing fragmented society. The book established him as a literary writer.
The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash, about a group of people who get sexual pleasure from car crashes caused quite a media and political storm.
His later work, such as Super-Cannes, about a group of of workers, who have affluent lives go out to fight and kill to alleviate their boredom; High-rise, about the affluent inhabitants of a luxury block of flats gradually descend into groups attacking enemy floors; Concrete Island, about a man crashing on a gigantic motorway exchange and being trapped on a virtual concrete island, unable to cross the motorway traffic.
All in all a great, if pessimistic writer.
He is well respected today with most of his novels high up in the Amazon sales list.
Links
Daily Telegraph Obituary
Wikipedia
BBC Obituary
Google list of blogs writing an obituary
Amazon: List of J G Ballard Books