For those of you who know that SciFi goes way beyond Star Wars and Star Trek, J.G. Ballard died yesterday. For the clueless, do yourselves a favour and go read one of his books. That's SciFi.
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009[1]) was a British novelist and short story writer who was a prominent part of the New Wave in science fiction in the mid- to late-1960s and whose work frequently focused on dystopian themes. His best known books are the controversial novel Crash, an exploration of sexual fetishism connected to automobile accidents, and the semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, about his childhood internment by the Japanese during World War II after the invasion and conquest of Shanghai, where Ballard was born in the International Settlement. Both books were adapted into films, by David Cronenberg and Stephen Spielberg respectively. 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 has been included in the Collins English Dictionary.[2] Ballard, who lived in the middle-class suburb of Shepperton in the United Kingdom, died in London on 19 April 2009 from prostate cancer, which had been diagnosed in June 2006. WIKI
I saw the movie 'Empire of the Sun' a few years ago. Really good story--I liked that scene where he followed his little paper 'plane over the rise and found thousands of Japanese soldiers waiting behind the dunes...:Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
