In Memoriam: J.G. Ballard (1930-2009)

This week, the world lost another great writer. J.G. Ballard, the master of experimental, dystopic science fiction, died at the age of 78. James Graham Ballard was born in Shanghai, China, in 1930, the son of a British businessman whose employer - a textile firm - transferred him there. The Ballard family's privileged existence came to an end when in 1943, occupying Japanese forces interned them and other foreigners in a concentration camp.

Ballard viewed this experience as more surreal than cruel, a real life encounter with the bizarre that planted the seeds of his writing career. His best known novel, Empire Of The Sun - an autobiographical novel unlike his other works - incorporates his childhood experiences in a fictional tale of an English boy growing up in 1930s Shanghai. The novel is filled with strange images from Ballard's childhood that came to symbolize his view of the world as "a bizarre external landscape propelled by large psychic forces." In 1987, Steven Spielberg directed a movie adaptation of Empire Of The Sun.

No stranger to controversy, Ballard first courted outrage with his 1969 book, The Atrocity Exhibition, an experimental work blending a non-linear narrative with scientifically worded reports on topics like the Vietnam War and the deaths of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and James Dean. The most controversial part of the book was a chapter titled "The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race."

The Atrocity Exhibition was the first of Ballard's novels in which he defined sex and violence as being inherently intertwined. Reviews were sharply mixed. Susan Sontag called it "subtle, brutal, cerebral, intoxicating," but New York Times book reviewer Paul Theroux called it "a stylish anatomy of outrage, and full of specious arguments, phony statistics, a disgusted fascination with movie stars and the sexual conceits of American brand names and paraphernalia.”

Ballard's most notorious novel was Crash, first published in 1973. David Cronenberg (who previously adapted William S. Burroughs' legendary novel Naked Lunch) directed a movie adaptation in 1996. In Crash, Ballard further explored the intertwining of sex and violence in a dark and graphic tale of a bizarre subculture of individuals with a sexual fetish for car crashes. They find particular pleasure in recreating famous car crashes like the ones that killed actors James Dean and Jayne Mansfield. Once again, the reviews were sharply mixed, with one New York Times book reviewer calling it "hands down, the most repulsive book I've yet to come across."

Crash would set the standard for Ballard's future novels, which dealt with the central theme of barbarity hiding inside technologically advanced modern Man, who is at heart a media-fed narcissist obsessed with meaningless pop culture. In Ballard's eyes, the soul of Man has been corrupted, rather than advanced, by the modern world.

J.G. Ballard's work has been compared to that of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Anthony Burgess. He defied the genre confinements of science fiction with his experimental, often surreal narratives. In 2008, he was listed by the London Times as one of the 50 greatest British writers since World War 2. His contribution to the world of literature will never be forgotten. He will be sorely missed.