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J.G. Ballard
| born |
November 15, 1930
|
| died |
April 19, 2009 |
| gender |
male |
| place of birth |
Shanghai International Settlement, China |
| website |
http://jgballard.com/ |
| genre |
Science Fiction & Fantasy, Short Stories, Biographies & Memoirs
|
| influences |
William S. Burroughs, Surrealism, Sigmund Freud, Jean Genet |
about this author
J.G. Ballard (James Graham Ballard) was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China where his father was a businessman. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and a Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF.
In 1956 his first short story was published in New Worlds and he took a full-time job on a technical journal, moving on to become assistant editor of a scientific journal, where he stayed until 1961. His first novel, The Drowned World, was written in the same year.
The literary distinctiveness of his work has given rise to the adjective Ballardian, defined by the Collins English Dictionary 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.
In 1984 won the ESFS award as "Best Short Story Writer".
In 2008, The Times included Ballard at number 27 on its list of The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945.
Ballard was diagnosed with prostate cancer in June 2006, from which he died in London in April 2009.
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