. . . I am not interested in imaginary alien planets.
Ballard's fiction has at times included many of the conventions of science fiction, but his writing is distinct from those genre examples that suggest a space western, with ray guns instead of six shooters. Perhaps partly because of this distinctiveness, Ballard has never had much success in the American science-fiction market, where his early books were published in paperback by Berkley; his reputation in Great Britain has grown over his career so that he has become something of a literary institution, published by such discriminating fiction houses as Jonathan Cape. His books have been well received in France, where his particular blend of erotic fantasy and surrealistic imagery seems less unfamiliar than it has in the English-speaking world.
His American recognition, however, has begun to change since the publication of his best-selling autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a work that helped to account for many of Ballard's familiar idiosyncrasies by showing their source in his childhood. James Graham Ballard was born on 15 November 1930 in Shanghai, China, into the privileged world of the British colonial class. His father ran a British textile plant there. Living in a home with nine servants and a chauffeur-driven Packard, young Ballard enjoyed the collage of eastern and western cultures of the city, which he later considered an introduction to his favorite artistic style—surrealism.
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