In Conversation: James Graham Ballard (1984)

An interview and audience Q&A with Ballard during his promotion of EMPIRE OF THE SUN, (1984)

​James Graham Ballard (November 18, 1930 - April 19, 2009) was a British science fiction writer. A large number of his writings describe dystopias.

His first stories date from 1956 and in the 60s he becomes one of the authors of reference of the call new wave of English science fiction. His literature develops the problems of the twentieth century, whether environmental catastrophes or the effect on a man of technological evolution.

In his first novel, The Drowned World (1962), he imagines the consequences of a global warming that causes the polar ice caps to melt. He was followed by The Wind of Nowhere (1962), The Burning World (1964), The Drought (1965) and , set in a wooded area of ​West Africa that is literally crystallising.

In 1973, he published Crash, a disturbing and explicit meditation on the relationship between sex drive and cars, and provoked a tense debate over the limits of censorship against "obscenity" when David Cronenberg adapted it to film in 1996. The film was about to not be released in England. After Crash(1973) and Concrete Island (1974) arrived High Rise  (1975), The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) and Hello America (1981).

In 1984 Ballard reached a much wider audience with the autobiographical work Empire Of The Sun, the story of a child in wartime, which then continued in The Kindness of Women (1991). The Day of Creation, another novel based in Africa, was published in 1987 and Running Wild in 1988.

His next novels were Rushing to Paradise  (1994), an apocalyptic tale that takes place in a Pacific atoll, Cocaine Nights (1996) and Super-Cannes (2000), both reworkings of the classic black novel on a decadent Costa del Sol, The First, and The Riviera, the second. Ballard was also a prolific author of stories and, in 1996, appeared his collection of essays and reviews Millennium Guide for the user.

Watch the video below:

loading...

loading...