- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday July 22 2008 15.40 BST
1930-
"I have - I won't say happy - not unpleasant memories of the camp. I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on, but at the same we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time!"
Birthplace
Shanghai, China
Education
Cambridge University, England (medicine)
Other jobs
RAF pilot, ad agency copywriter, encyclopaedia salesman, assistant editor of scientific journal Chemistry and Industry.
Did you know?
He predicted Ronald Reagan's rise to president in his 1967 short story Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (contained in The Atrocity Exhibition, the title of which alone got the book pulped).
Critical verdict
60s king of the SF New Wave, he moved from speculative adventure apocalypses into musings on the nature of the future, mutability of sexuality and consistency of time and perception. "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!" was his publisher's reader's verdict on Crash: since then, a cult following has matured into critical approval.
Recommended works
Empire of the Sun is a fascinating child's-eye war novel; his short stories combine existentialism and science fiction. 2000's Super-Cannes saw Ballard at the peak of his powers: a mature detective story and techno-dystopia in a workaholic business park where residents let off steam with a little light psychopathy.
Influences
Science fiction and William Burroughs' probing into the mechanical possibilities of the human body are obvious influences (Naked Lunch was "a grenade tossed into the sherry party of English fiction"); his interest in temporal dislocation also echoes JB Priestley's time-slides.
Now read on
Ballard admirers Durrell and Graham Greene, and today's 'wild men' Will Self and Irvine Welsh. Try also William Gibson's techno-dreams, Philip K Dick's cerebral SF and Jeff Noon's amphetamine aloofness.
Adaptations
His intensely visual, spare and atmospheric prose has translated surprisingly badly to the screen, and therefore his cinematic outings have . In 1970, a production of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth had some memorable effects by Jim Danforth. David Cronenberg's brave attempt to capture Crash stalled in 1996; The Atrocity Exhibition (2000) was seen by very few. The most notable exception is 1987's touching Empire Of The Sun. His novel High Rise has been scheduled for production in 2008.
Recommended biography
Booker Prize shortlisted Empire of the Sun - about his childhood struggle to survive in a Chinese internee camp - and its sequel, The Kindness of Women, are autobiographical.
Useful links and work online
Background
· Future shock: interview in Spike Magazine
· Analysis of Ballard in the Modern Word
· Ballard on William Burroughs: Salon interview
· Gallery of first-edition Ballard bookcovers
· Extreme metaphor: A crash course in the fiction of JG Ballard
