J. G.
BALLARD
J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) was born in Shanghai, China, in 1930.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was interned in the Japanese-run “Longhua Civilian Assembly Center” from 1942 to 1945. The pessimistic outlook formed during his childhood—shaped by the collapse of an entire world—remained with him throughout his life and is reflected throughout his literary work.
After the end of the war, J. G. Ballard was reunited with his parents and they returned to England in 1946. The bleak urban British landscape and its conservative, overly serious society did not appeal to him.
From the early 1950s, he turned to writing, discovering the importance of science fiction, which he regarded as “the most important branch of contemporary literature.”
He wrote 15 novels and numerous short stories, including The Drowned World, The Drought, Empire of the Sun, and Crash. Ballard explored the concept of “inner space,” a term he coined in 1962 to describe modern psychological and societal concerns, rather than outer space and alien worlds.
The originality and strength of his vision—both terrestrial and cosmic—secured his place among the writers who significantly renewed science fiction.