Acclaimed author JG Ballard died today after a lengthy illness.
The award-winning novelist and short story writer, best known for Empire of the Sun about his childhood struggle to survive in a Chinese internee camp, was ill for several years, his agent Margaret Hanbury said.
Despite regularly being referred to as a science fiction writer, Ballard says what he was really doing was ‘picturing the psychology of the future’.
In a prolific career the 78-year-old attracted critical acclaim and controversy in equal measure for his work.
Born in Shanghai, China, he was educated at Cambridge University before becoming an RAF pilot, advert agency copywriter, encyclopaedia salesman and assistant editor of scientific journal Chemistry and Industry.
Since arriving in Britain, he built up a passionate readership, particularly after Empire of The Sun, a fictionalised account of his childhood was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987.
The book tells the story of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai, describing his experiences of starvation, survival and death marches.
Director David Cronenberg also brought Ballard's infamous book about the sexual desires stimulated by car crashes to the screen in the film Crash.
His more recent works include Super-Cannes and Millennium People.
