J G Ballard Popular Books
J G Ballard Biography & Facts
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist and short story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media. Ballard first became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962), but later courted political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists. In 1984, Ballard won broad critical recognition for the war novel Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical story of the experiences of a British boy during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; three years later, the American film director Steven Spielberg adapted the novel into a film of the same name. The novelist's journey from youth to mid-age is chronicled, with fictional inflections, in The Kindness of Women (1991), and in the autobiography Miracles of Life (2008). Some of Ballard's early novels have been adapted as films, including Crash (1996), directed by David Cronenberg, and High-Rise (2015), directed by Ben Wheatley, an adaptation of the 1975 novel. From the distinct nature of the literary fiction of J. G. Ballard arose the adjective Ballardian, defined 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". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes the novelist Ballard as preoccupied with "Eros, Thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies". Life Shanghai J. G. Ballard was born to Edna Johnstone (1905–1998) and James Graham Ballard (1901–1966), who was a chemist at the Calico Printers' Association, a textile company in the city of Manchester, and later became the chairman and managing director of the China Printing and Finishing Company, the Association's subsidiary company in Shanghai. The China in which Ballard was born featured the Shanghai International Settlement, where Western foreigners "lived an American style of life". At school age, Ballard attended the Cathedral School of the Holy Trinity Church, Shanghai. Upon the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Ballard family abandoned their suburban house, and moved to a house in the city centre of Shanghai to avoid the warfare between the Chinese defenders and the Japanese invaders. After the Battle of Hong Kong (8–25 December 1941), the Imperial Japanese Army occupied the International Settlement and imprisoned the Allied civilians in early 1943. The Ballard family were sent to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre where they lived in G-block, a two-storey residence for 40 families, for the remainder of the Second World War. At the Lunghua Centre, Ballard attended school, where the teachers were prisoners with a profession. In the autobiography Miracles of Life, Ballard said that those experiences of displacement and imprisonment were the thematic bases of the novel Empire of the Sun.Concerning the violence found in Ballard's fiction, the novelist Martin Amis said that Empire of the Sun "gives shape to what shaped him." About his experiences of the Japanese war in China, Ballard said: "I don't think you can go through the experience of war without one's perceptions of the world being forever changed. The reassuring stage-set that everyday reality in the suburban West presents to us is torn down; you see the ragged scaffolding, and then you see the truth beyond that, and it can be a frightening experience." "I have — I won't say happy — [but] not unpleasant memories of the camp... I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on — but, at the same time, we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time!" In his later life, Ballard became an atheist, yet said: "I'm extremely interested in religion ... I see religion as a key to all sorts of mysteries that surround the human consciousness." Britain and Canada In late 1945, Ballard's mother returned to Britain with J.G. and his sister, where they resided at Plymouth, and he attended The Leys School in Cambridge, where he won a prize for a well-written essay. Within a few years, Mrs Ballard and her daughter returned to China and rejoined Mr Ballard; and, whilst not at school, Ballard resided with grandparents. In 1949, he studied medicine at King's College, Cambridge, with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist. At university, Ballard wrote avant-garde fiction influenced by psychoanalysis and the works of surrealist painters, and pursued writing fiction and medicine. In his second year at Cambridge, in May 1951, the short story "The Violent Noon", a Hemingway pastiche, won a crime-story competition and was published in the Varsity newspaper. In October 1951, encouraged by publication, and understanding that clinical medicine disallowed time to write fiction, Ballard forsook medicine and enrolled at Queen Mary College to read English literature. After a year, he quit the College and worked as an advertising copywriter, then worked as an itinerant encyclopaedia salesman. Throughout that odd-job period, Ballard continued writing short-story fiction but found no publisher.In early 1954, Ballard joined the Royal Air Force and was assigned to the Royal Canadian Air Force flight-training base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. In that time, he encountered American science fiction magazines, and, in due course, wrote his first science fiction story, "Passport to Eternity", a pastiche of the American science fiction genre; yet the story was not published until 1962.In 1955, Ballard left the RAF and returned to England, where he met and married Helen Mary Matthews, who was a secretary at the Daily Express newspaper; the first of three Ballard children was born in 1956. In December 1956, Ballard became a professional science-fiction writer with the publication of the short stories "Escapement" (in New Worlds magazine) and "Prima Belladonna" (in Science Fantasy magazine). At the New Worlds magazine, the editor, Edward J. Carnell, greatly supported Ballard's science-fiction writing, and published most of his early stories. From 1958 onwards, Ballard was assistant editor of the scientific journal Chemistry and Industry. His interest in art involved the emerging Pop Art movement, and, in the late 1950s, Ballard exhibited collages that represented his ideas for a new kind of novel. Moreover, his avant-garde inclinations discomfited writers of mainstream science fiction, whose artistic attitudes Ballard considered philistine. Briefly attending the 1957 World Science Fiction Convention in London, Ballard left disillusioned and demoralised by the type and quality of the science-fiction writing he encoun.... Discover the J G Ballard popular books. Find the top 100 most popular J G Ballard books.
Best Seller J G Ballard Books of 2024
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The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
J. G. BallardA collection of 98 enthralling and pulsequickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard. With a body of work unparalleled in twenti...
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The Crash of Hennington
Patrick NessLove is political, obsessive and utterly strange in the first novel from the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy and new novel ‘More Than This’.Love is political, obsessive and utt...
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Star Of The Morning
Pamela Jooste'I knew then that there were some things not even Ruby could keep from me for ever and this was one of them. We were coloured girls in a white world that didn't want us.' Born on t...
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J. G. Ballard - Science Fiction als Paradoxon
Hans FreyJ. G. Ballard gilt als Erfinder der New Wave, mit der er in den 1960er Jahren neue Ausdrucksformen in die Science Fiction einbrachte. An seiner stilistischen Brillanz besteht kein ...
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7 best short stories by Aldous Huxley
Aldous HuxleyWelcome to the 7 Best Short Stories book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. This edition is dedicated to the british author Aldous Huxley. Aldous...
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Classic Stories of World War II
PyramidClassic Stories of World War II is a collection of fiction and nonfiction excerpts from the works of worldclass authors who lived through the conflict. Authentic and impassioned st...
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One Tongue Singing
Susan MannCamille Pascal, a young, unmarried French nurse comes to South Africa with her father and her small daughter, Zara, during the closing years of the apartheid regime. The family set...
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The Players
Zander MartinTwo friends are about to embark on the trip of a lifetime.Meet Pete: an utter failure when it comes to women and in desperate need of a lucky break. Meet Pete's best friend, CJ: an...
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Glitterati
Oliver K. LangmeadA Clockwork Orange and RuPaul's Drag Race meet Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in this fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and feckless billionaires.Simone is one ...
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Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups
Ben HoldenThere are few more precious routines than that of the bedtime story. So why do we discard this invaluable ritual as grownups to the detriment of our wellbeing and good health?...
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Wolves
Simon IngsA chilling literary dystopia for those who love Iain Banks and JG Ballard.Conrad is desperate for an escape after a devastating accident changes his way of life. When his childhood...
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Reports from the Deep End
Maxim Jakubowski, Rick McGrath, Will Self, Iain Sinclair & Michael MoorcockA fascinating and unsettling anthology of 32 science fiction short stories in tribute to the prophetic dystopias of New Wave scifi pioneer, and literary titan of the twentieth cent...
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Welcome To Coolsville
Jason MordauntNine days is a long time in Coolsville. More than enough time for Dr. Kiely Flanagan to shop business mogul J.P. Gillespie to a scandalhungry media, collect the bounty and split fo...
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The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
J. G. BallardFirst published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of J. G. Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to ...
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Dover Beach
Leslie ThomasSummer 1940. The evacuation of Dunkirk proves that the British can rise to a challenge, even against seemingly insurmountable odds. But now the soldiers walk the streets of Dover, ...
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Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse that Helped
Saki'Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new breakfast food, heralded under the resounding name of 'Filboid Studge''H.H. Munro, better known by his pen name, Sak...
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36 Streets
T.R. NapperAltered Carbon and The WindUp Girl meet Apocalypse Now in this Ditmar and Aurealis awardwinning, fastpaced, intelligent, actiondriven cyberpunk, probing questions of memory, identi...
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The Fall Girl
Denise SewellThe day Frances Fall steals a baby from outside a shop, is the day her past catches up with her. At the age of thirtysix, Frances is forced to relive a life dominated on one side b...
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The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
Malcolm BradburyThis anthology is in many was a ‘best of the best’, containing gems from thirtyfour of Britain's outstanding contemporary writers. It is a book to dip into, to read from cover to c...
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The Psychological Fictions of J.G. Ballard
Samuel FrancisJ. G. Ballard selfprofessedly 'devoured' the work of Freud as a teenager, and entertained early thoughts of becoming a psychiatrist; he opened his novelwriting career with ...
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J. G. Ballard
D. Harlan WilsonProphetic short stories and apocalyptic novels like The Crystal World made J. G. Ballard a foundational figure in the British New Wave. Rejecting the science fiction of rockets and...
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The Doll Princess
Tom BennWinner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year AwardIt's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the Evening News is carrying reports of two ...
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Gloriana
Michael MoorcockIn this “spellbinding” (The Sunday Times) awardwinning fantasy, the vast empire of Albion is ruled by the beautiful and forlorn queen, Gloriana, who must battle against a nefarious...
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Essential Novelists - Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley & August NemoWelcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most ...
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The Smoke
Simon IngsA searing nearfuture tale about love, loss and loneliness in an incomprehensible world. Humanity has been split into three different species. Mutual incomprehension has fractured t...
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The Inner Man
John BaxterAn explosive and perceptive biography of the British novelist J.G. BallardTo many people, J.G. Ballard will always be the schoolboy in Steven Spielberg's movie Empire of the Sun, s...