J. G. Ballard

There's nothing quite like him. (The Bus 5.5)

Apr 29, 2024

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The Stop

James Graham (J. G.) Ballard (1930-2009) was a British science fiction author who set his work in ‘ecologically unbalanced landscapes caused by decadent technological excess’. Considered to be one of the ‘most strikingly original English writers’ of the second half of the twentieth century, Ballard was celebrated for his ‘wayward imagination.’ Enabling his work to move through ‘various phases while remaining instantly recognisable’, Ballard developed a distinctive quality that became known as ‘Ballardian’.1

Ballard was born in Shanghai, a year after his parents emigrated there to enable his father to become managing director of a British-owned textile factory. He grew up in the colonial upper middle-class, a comfortable existence that lasted even after the Japanese invaded China when he was seven. Though like ‘most European expatriates,’ the Ballards were able to maintain a ‘normal, prosperous existence,’ this ended in December 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. At this point, like other ‘enemy civilians’, the family was interned in the Lunghua civilian assembly centre where they remained until August 1945.

Though he was never separated from his parents and sister, and the circumstances of their confinement ‘were not especially severe,’ Ballard nevertheless grew from being a ‘naive 12-year-old to a perhaps prematurely wise 14-year-old’ during these years. The dramatic contrast to their previous lifestyle awakened in him a ‘lifelong sensitivity to dislocations, sudden reversals, paradoxes, and ironies’. A few months after the Japanese surrender, the family repatriated to England - a country he had never seen - where he would concentrate on science until he entered King’s College, Cambridge in 1949 to study medicine for two years before dropping out to become a writer.2

A year studying English at the University of London was followed by a series of numerous short-term jobs, including Covent Garden flower market porter, advertising copywriter and door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman, while he continued to submit stories ‘unsuccessfully to literary magazines’. In 1954, he joined the RAF as a trainee pilot in Saskatchewan, a ‘romantic impulse that sustained him for just one year’. The experience of flying fed his imagination, but the ‘most significant aspect of his time in Canada was his discovery, in the servicemen's canteen, of American science fiction magazines’. Turning his attention to this genre, he published his first sci-fi story, ‘Prima Belladonna’, in 1956.

Ballard was a short story writer for the next several years, a period that reached its peak with ‘The Voices of Time’ in 1960. Set in a desert landscape, in a ‘moodily-depicted near-future world situated in a larger, declining universe’, this story introduced his readers to what Kingsley Amis called ‘the inner reaches of Ballard-land’. Four books quickly appeared in 1962, the novels The Wind from Nowhere and The Drowned World, and the story collections The Voices of Time and Billenium. The death of his wife from pneumonia while on a holiday in Spain in 1964 ‘unhinged him’ for a while, but ‘resisting suggestions that he farm them out’, he decided to care for his three children, creating - in the words of his daughter, Fay - a ‘lovely, warm family nest.’

After half a year of writing nothing and drinking too much, he joined in the swinging 60s. The Drought (1965) and The Crystal World (1966) were published, he became prose editor of the poetry magazine Ambit, and becoming friends with the science fiction writer and editor of New Worlds, Michael Moorcock,3 opened the door to ‘fashionable parties, occasional drugs and new women friends’. Ballard continued to publish short stories and became ‘something of a guru to a circle of younger sci-fi writers’, experimenting with non-linear plots and continuing to develop his thematic interest in ‘dehumanised sex and technology at their most extreme’. A collection of nine ‘so-called condensed novels’ and six prose satires, The Atrocity Exhibition was published in 1970. A challenging, disturbing collection, this was followed by Crash, in 1973. Written in a state of what Ballard called ‘willed madness,’ this - his most controversial novel - explored the ‘psycho-sexual role of the motor car in all our lives’ through a graphic investigation of all the ‘conceivable erotic overtones of the car crash’.4

Concrete Island (1974) and High Rise (1975) - both of which concerned the devolution of middle-class people into savagery - cemented his distinctive Ballardian voice, and were well-received. However, nothing would prepare his audience for what would become his most popular novel, Empire of the Sun (1984). A ‘heavily fictionalised version’ of his life in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, this major war novel became a bestseller, won the Guardian fiction prize, and formed the basis of Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the same name.5

Further short stories and novels would follow, including The Day of Creation (1987), a psychological fantasy set in an imaginary Africa; War Fever (1990), a collection of ‘humorously nihilistic meditations’ on matters such as ‘compulsory sex and the oblivious attitudes of a media-saturated society’; Cocaine Nights (1996), his first detective novel, set in southern Spain; and Super-Cannes (2000), a crime novel set on the French Riviera. In his final book, the well-received and ‘intensely moving memoir’ Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton (2008), Ballard revealed that he was terminally ill. He died on 19 April 2009.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a short episode (4:55) of PBS’s Great Performances ‘Behind the Scenes’. This one is a look at how the show’s music director, Aaron Guidry, connects his band and the performers to produce the perfect soundtrack. It’s breathtaking in its accuracy, and certainly worth five minutes.

Behind the Scenes: Cirque du Soleil's Band

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is J. G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes (2000). Ballard’s 25th novel tells the story of Dr Jane Sinclair and her husband Paul, who relocate to the seemingly perfect closed community of Eden-Olympia, just north of Cannes in southern France.6 A business park filled with luxury homes, private doctors, private security forces, personal psychiatrists - and every convenience needed by the modern businessman - Eden-Olympia appears to be nothing short of a paradise. However, in typical Ballardian fashion, beneath the surface lies a very different truth.

From the back: A disturbing mystery awaits Paul and Jane Sinclair when they arrive in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech business park in the hills above Cannes. Jane is set to work as a doctor for the executives who live in this ultra-modern workers’ paradise. But what caused her apparently sane predecessor to set out one morning and murder ten people in a killing spree which made headlines around the world? As Paul investigates his new surroundings, he begins to uncover a thriving subculture of crime that is spiralling out of control.

Both a novel of ideas and a compelling thriller that will keep you turning the pages to the shocking denouement, this is an extraordinary work of fiction from the bestselling author of Empire of the Sun, Cocaine Nights and Crash.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks directly inspired by Ballard’s works:7 ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (The Buggles, 1979), ‘High Rise’ (Hawkwind, 1977), ‘Down in the Park’ (Gary Numan, 1979), ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ (Joy Division, 1980) and ‘Warm Leatherette’ (The Normal, 1978). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from J. G. Ballard:

‘Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

The Bus