On my Bookshelf: J.G. Ballard: Interviews

RE/Search Publications -- Features -- J.G. Ballard: Interviews : "Ballard's writing stripped the 20th century of its cultural illusions. Most science fiction authors conceal their mysticism beneath what H.G. Wells called 'an ingenious use of scientific patter.' Ballard does the opposite, smuggling the Enlightenment in under the cover of dreams. It doesn't matter how far or fast humanity travels, his stories say: even in space, the most alien creatures we'll confront are ourselves.'

For more than four decades Ballard has exerted a deep influence over diverse writers like Angela Carter, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Houellebecq, and Don DeLillo, in a career that climaxed with his Booker Prize-nominated 'Empire of the Sun' (filmed by Steven Spielberg--of all people---in 1987). . . With the new volume of interviews from RE/Search, we can finally see Ballard whole. He is revealed as a moralist, standing at the intersection between Jonathan Swift and Salvador Dali. "