Andrew Wheeler alerts us to J.G. Ballard’s death 19 April 2009 after a long illness. This BBC obituary includes a one-and-a-half minute video clip of Ballard reading from his novel Kingdom Come. Born 15 November 1930 in the Shanghai International Settlement in Shanghai, China, to British parents, James Graham Ballard was interned with his family at the age of 12 in a World War II Japanese prison camp. Perhaps his most famous novel, Empire of the Sun, was a fictionalized account of those years. Steven Spielberg turned it into a motion picture of the same name. Recently, one of his earlier works was made into David Cronenberg’s film Crash.
He moved to the UK with his mother and sister after the war, and stayed there with his grandparents when his mother rejoined his father in China. After school, he worked as a copywriter and encyclopedia salesman. He joined the RAF in 1953, and was posted to Saskatchewan, Canada, where he discovered science fiction magazines and began writing science fiction. His first story was published in 1956 in New Worlds.
He began a full-time writing career in the 1960s, and produced 19 novels and more than 20 collections of short stories. He was most closely associated with the New Wave movement, but also known for his dystopias. His 1966 novel The Crystal World won the 1970 Seiun Award for best foreign novel, and his 1979 novel The Unlimited Dream Company won the 1980 British SF Award.
He married Helen Mary Matthews in 1955, and they had three children before she died of pneumonia in 1964.