The greats just keep dropping these days. After the saddening news of playwright behemoth Harold Pinter, fans of the written word will be saddened by the news that this week saw the demise of author JG Ballard. He died at the age of 78 of prostate cancer.
Ballard’s career as a writer started in the 60’s, where coming from an avante-gard mentality, began writing sci-fi books, such as The Drowned World (envisaging the melting of the ice caps, a concern still felt today by the likes of Al Gore). Ballard quickly became associated with rather educated depictions of dystopian futures. Ballard went on to delve into the pshychological and physiological effects that our increasing reliance on tehcnology had, especially in the powerfully written Atrocity Exhibition. His controversial novel Crash, was adapted into a film by David Cronenberg, an adaptation that sadly took a distanced approach to the subject material and left a bad taste in the mouth of the viewers.
Ballard’s big break was his fictionalised account of his early youth, in which he attempted to escape the Japanese assaults on Shanghai and China. Its power and heart was enough to prompt Steven Spielberg to adapt Empire of the Sun, which started the career of Christian Bale.
Ballard continued writing novels about the present and future into his later years, mostly to critical acclaim. He left behind him a style of of storytelling and subject matter that would inspire everything from Blade Runner to the Matrix to Minority Report. Indeed, I’ve always been surprised that more of his novels weren’t adapted into films, something which Hollywood should rectify if they’re searching for intelligent, engaging science fiction stories. One of his novels, High Rise, is currently in pre-production.
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