'Cult' Writer JG Ballard Dead at 78

By Drew Nelles,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 19, 2009 5:30 PM CDT
'Cult' Writer JG Ballard Dead at 78
Author JG Ballard died this morning after years of poor health, his agent said.    (Wikipedia)

British author JG Ballard died this morning "with great sadness" after many years of poor health, his agent said today. The 78-year-old novelist and short story writer was most famous for his semi-autobiographical book Empire of the Sun, later made into a film by Steven Spielberg, and his controversial novel Crash, adapted for the screen by David Cronenberg.

Empire of the Sun recounts Ballard’s boyhood in Japanese-occupied Shanghai; Crash revolves around the sexual desires aroused by car accidents. Ballard's "acute and visionary observation of contemporary life" gained him "cult status," his agent said. Others called his work science-fiction, but Ballard said it was "picturing the psychology of the future," the BBC reports. More recently, Ballard authored Super-Cannes and Millennium People.
(More writer stories.)

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