James Graham "J. G." Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Ballard came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ballard focused on an eclectic variety of short stories such as The Atrocity Exhibition, which drew closer comparison with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In 1973 the highly controversial novel Crash was published, a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism; the protagonist becomes sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. The story was later adapted into a film of the same name by David Cronenberg. While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. 

November 15th, 1930 in Shanghai  /  Died:   Apr 19th, 2009