Back J. G. Ballard AN جيه جي بالارد Arabic جيمس جراهام بالارد ARZ جی. جی. بالارد AZB Джеймс Балард Bulgarian জে জি ব্যালার্ড Bengali/Bangla J. G. Ballard Breton James Graham Ballard Catalan James Graham Ballard Czech J. G. Ballard Welsh
J. G. Ballard | |
|---|---|
 Ballard in 1984 | |
| Born | James Graham Ballard 15 November 1930 Shanghai International Settlement, Republic of China (present-day Shanghai, People's Republic of China) |
| Died | 19 April 2009 (aged 78) London, England, UK |
| Resting place | Kensal Green Cemetery |
| Occupation | Novelist, satirist, short story writer, essayist |
| Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge Queen Mary University of London[1] |
| Genre | Dystopian fiction Satire Science fiction Transgressive fiction |
| Literary movement | New Wave |
| Notable works | Crash Empire of the Sun High-Rise The Atrocity Exhibition |
| Spouse |
Helen Mary Matthews
(m. 1955; died 1964) |
| Children | 3, including Bea Ballard |
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009)[2] was an English novelist and short-story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media.[3] Ballard first became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962). He later courted controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the 1968 story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan", and later the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.
In 1984, Ballard won broad critical recognition for the war novel Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical story of the experiences of a British boy during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai;[4] three years later, the American film director Steven Spielberg adapted the novel into a film of the same name. The novelist's journey from youth to mid-age is chronicled, with fictional inflections, in The Kindness of Women (1991), and in the autobiography Miracles of Life (2008). Some of Ballard's early novels have been adapted as films, including Crash (1996), directed by David Cronenberg, and High-Rise (2015), an adaptation of the 1975 novel directed by Ben Wheatley.
From the distinct nature of the literary fiction of J. G. Ballard arose the adjective Ballardian, defined as: "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments".[5] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes the novelist Ballard as preoccupied with "Eros, Thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".[6]
- ^ "Alumni and Fellows". Queen Mary University of London. Archived from the original on 5 July 2017. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
- ^ Jones, Thomas (10 April 2008). "Thomas Jones reviews 'Miracles of Life' by J.G. Ballard • LRB 10 April 2008". London Review of Books. pp. 18–20. Archived from the original on 29 November 2019. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
- ^ Dibbell, Julian (February 1989). "Weird Science". Spin Magazine.
- ^ "Empire of the Sun (1984)". Ballardian. 16 September 2006. Archived from the original on 20 June 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
- ^ "About". Ballardian. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
- ^ Will Self, 'Ballard, James Graham (1930–2009)' Archived 17 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2013. Retrieved 3 January 2013, (subscription required)