In the following essay, Luckhurst discusses both the modernist and postmodernist characteristics of Ballard's work.

In the following essay, Luckhurst explores stylistic and thematic aspects of Ballard's writing.

In the following essay, Stephenson analyzes Ballard's thematic employment of illusion.

In the following essay, Stephenson scrutinizes the metaphysical themes of Ballard's early short stories.

In the following essay, Foster, an associate professor of English at Southern Methodist University, contends that Ballard's presentation of extreme perversity and violence—particularly as found in Running Wild, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and Empire of the Sun—represents a stark critique of modern consumer and technological society which illustrates the objectification of the human body as an instrument of sexual pleasure and destruction.

In the following essay, Brigg examines Ballard's preoccupation with time in “The Voices of Time,” The Crystal World, Hello America, and “News from the Sun.” Brigg contends that these works exemplify Ballard's conception of time as a subjective, man-made perception of the external world—rather than an absolute measure of reality—in which his characters explore the inner space between universal and personal time.

In the following essay, Wagar discerns underlying elements of idealism and a longing for psychic transformation and transcendence in Ballard's fiction. According to Wagar, Ballard's work, despite its dark glorifications of nihilistic or amoral behavior, embodies a positive contribution to anti-capitalist utopian aspirations.

In the following essay, Brigg perceives Ballard's treatment of time and reality as entities apprehended subjectively by the individual.

In the following essay, Brigg surveys the “antecedents” or influences and stylistic forms of Ballard's early short fiction.

In the following essay, Finkelstein compares the ethos which animates the science fiction works of J. G. Ballard and Robert Smithson to that which inspires modern and postmodern art.

In the following essay, Brigg discusses “the obsessive quality” of Ballard's later short stories.

In the following interview, Ballard discusses the negative impact of technology, violence, and mass culture in Western society; comments on science fiction, literary realism, and his own writing; and shares his feelings about the landscape and livability of various cities in Europe and the United States.

In the following two-part essay, Schuyler attempts to amend David Pringle's pioneering study of Jungian psychological symbols used commonly by Ballard.

In the following essay, Stephenson delineates how Ballard consistently subverts basic assumptions about the nature of reality and identity in his fiction, and provides an overview of Ballard's career and critical discussion of his works.

In the following essay, Carr emphasizes the role of the body and the notion of inner space, among other themes, in Ballard's work.

In the following essay, Brigg analyzes Ballard's expressive and intensely symbolic writing style in his short stories.

"The Violent Noon" [Ballard's first published story] is a story about terrorism and military reprisals, set in Malaya during the Emergency. Although it is not SF, it prefigures many of the concerns of Ballard's writing, with its jungle setting, its element of violence, and, above all, a plot which hinges on a psychological paradox…. Ballard needed science fiction: the pressure of his imagination demanded a freer outlet than could be provided by conventional short stories i...

In the following review of Iain Sinclair's Crash: David Cronenberg's Post-Mortem on J. G. Ballard's “Trajectory of Fate,” Gray discusses Ballard's literary significance and the major themes and disturbing cultural observations in his work.

In the following review, Priest offers praise for The Day of Creation.

There was a time, some ten or fifteen years ago, when the notion of "inner space," usually associated with the writings of J. G. Ballard, threatened to change the direction of science fiction. The mind, it was suggested, was the genre's true subject. Down here in the human head, away from the galaxies, was virgin land, Freud's new frontier…. Science fiction soon settled back into its old tracks and took to the stars again, but fantasy and dream, long outlawed by the more e...

[More and more J. G. Ballard] looks like a leading figure in a very rich and developing field. His earlier work was usually cast as science fiction, but he has long since worked loose from that pocket. Like many excellent contemporary writers, from Italo Calvino to Thomas Pynchon, he draws on science-fiction methods to create a magical modern fantasy. A writer of enormous inventive powers, an explorer of the displacements produced in modern consciousness by the blank ecology of stark architecture, bare high...