J.G. Ballard

Writer

Name at birth: James Graham Ballard

J.G. Ballard used his own childhood in a Japanese prison camp as the basis for his 1984 novel Empire of the Sun. As a young man he settled in Shepperton, England and, after studying medicine, began a career as a writer. Though Empire of the Sun is a fairly mainstream story, Ballard's other books are not easily classified; some call them science fiction, others simply creepy or disturbing. They generally combine sex, surgery and technology as part of a psychoanalytical depiction of the modern human condition. Ballard is also the author of Crash (1973), which was made into a 1996 movie starring Holly Hunter and James Spader. (Empire of the Sun had already been made into a movie in 1987, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring a young Christian Bale as the Ballard-like boy, Jim.) Ballard's other books include The Crystal World (1966), High-rise (1975), The Day of Creation (1987) and Cocaine Nights (1996). He published an autobiography, Miracles of Life, in 2008; Ballard told The Times of London that he wrote the book after being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006.

Ballard, like actor Matthew Broderick, is an honorary member of our loop Death By Car.