<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/2843867562_305155f1f5_o.jpg"
Sadly, J. G. Ballard has died. An enormous literature has appeared online paying tribute to his life and work. Noteable, I thought, was an article in Salon by Simon Reynolds, who treats Ballard as a fabulist of ideas, and interestingly traces his current influence on post-punk and popular music.
[Image courtesy of blank [AT] null66913, reproduced under a Creative Commons licence. An extensive gallery of images of the “Autopsy of the new millennium” exhibition on Ballard’s work at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona can be accessed at Flickr.]
Update: A round up of tributes to Ballard.
I’m a big fan of Ballard, if only because his work tends to reflect my own deeply cynical view of human nature.
Mind you, having read Empire of the Sun, you can see where many of his themes come from.
He will be sadly missed.
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold …
Thanks, JG, for all the mind & imagination stimulation, and fascination with a future beyond earth’s bounds! And the same in students who borrowed/ pinched my home-room stock (not often “librarian approved” lit).
I “discovered” Ballard with “The Drowned World”, probably through a serialised pre-publication version, as I did most SciFi. The books (usually USA imports) cost a mint & took ages to appear in Briz – if they made it that far – I’d save for ages for a vac[school] raid on Melbourne’s SciFi bookshop.
Then felt I like some watcher of the stars
When as new planet swims into his ken
Johnny Keats would have loved them!
PS: I remember “The Drowned World” as the beginning of the Global Warming debate – like the “fourth dimension” (Einstein’s time) debates, and Vietnam War debates, and “paradigm” (Tom Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions) debates, space exploration debates and endless argument over Marxist/ neoMarxist, post-modernist, structuralist, etc philosophical debates, pop-music debates, in student ‘digs’, fueled by cheap booze.
Luckily Bolt & Co seem to have missed them (too young), or we’d have a Blame Ballard: Climate Change is just SciFi campaign!
I’ve just re-read the Salon article to see if that was mentioned. Maybe one has to have reached OAP age to remember.
I came to Ballard early courtesy of a neighbour, who gave my Mum a box of books for a sick 10 year old who had exhausted his library ration. Ballard, Ellison, Brunner and Moorcock among others iirc. I’ve never been quite the same since.
It’d be close to 40 years since I’ve read any of Ballard’s stuff. I loved it, but I reckon I’d get a lot more out of it now that I’m an adult.
There’ll probably be a lot of reprints available soon.
So Jim Ballard has just moved into the great empty swimming pool in the sky?
In a remarkable piece of synchronistic Ballardism that I’m sure the sly old beast (the older Ballard got the more he looked like a strange burrowing and swimming beast. A thing of forests and water meadows. The vole conspicuously absent from “The Wind In The Willows”) would appreciate, I’d just started reading his proper autobiography “Miracle Of Life” when I heard here and there, like rumours of a lost battle, that he was finally enjoying a permanent intermission.
So, as a salute to England’s greatest recently dead writer, I can only say:
His father was a big HG Wells fan.
He watched someone being strangled to death.
He was a big Richmal Crompton fan.
Dissecting the body of a female doctor occupied more pages of his autobiography than any other incident that he chose recount therein.
He was a trained pilot who thought seriously about flying a nuclear bomber.
He was good friends with both Kingsley Amis and Michael Moorcock. At the same time.
His sister was director of the Sir John Soane Museum.
For twenty years, he drank at least half a bottle of whiskey every day. Until he discovered LSD.
According to people who have met both, he had exactly the same stoney green-gray eyes as Graham Greene.
When he met William Burroughs, apparently Bill was freaked out by this affable limey who cheerfully and calmly took the discussion well beyond Bill’s comfort zone.
All his kids have grown up into happy and stable lives.
And Jim Ballard would totally like that his utterly prosaic pebbledash Shepperton bungalow will now be classified by the National Trust.
“Preserved in aspic? I knew England would eventually have its revenge on me this way. But you’re too late. There’s a hijacked Saturn V booster stage in the tropical ruins of Florida that always has had my name on it.”
à bientôt Jim. Send us a postcard from out there. Again.
And when I discovered Jim Ballard would be unlikely to write anything more for a while, after playing Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire VERY LOUD, I got out Spielberg’s “Empire Of The Sun” which does hold up very well these days, not least because of John Malkovich and Christian Bale’s great work.
In fact Bale’s performance is really quite amazing throughout. An extraordinary piece of acting. The scene where as a starved pubescent temporary orphan cheering on “P-51! “Cadillac Of The Skies!” as they blow up the biggest community he’s ever known is a truly stunning screen moment. A moment where Ballard, Spielberg, Bale and Stoppard were all in sync.
Update: A round up of tributes to Ballard.
Wonderful link, Mark.
Many years ago I wernt through a fair few of Ballard’s science fiction (when I was just seriously introducing myself to the genre beyond Asimov, Heinlein,Herbert, Clarke and one or two others – stuff that didn’t blaze out at you from the news-stand. Have to say I was hooked for quite a long while.
Damn!
.
RIP> My favourite has always been that small novellette Running Wild. His last novel was good except for the drawing room ending. Anyone read The Third Presidency of Ronald Reagan.
.
.
So Jim Ballard has just moved into the great empty swimming pool in the sky?
.
Very tasty Nabakov. Godd to see you can still write after you’re dead.