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Ballard's biography

In 1964 Ballard's wife Mary died suddenly of

pneumonia, leaving him to raise their three

children - James, Fay and Bea Ballard - by

himself. Ballard never remarried; however,

a few years later his friend and fellow author 

Michael Moorcockintroduced him to Claire Walsh,

who became his partner for the rest of his life

(he died at her London residence) and is often

referred to in his writings as "Claire Churchill".

Walsh, who worked in publishing during the

1960s and 70s, was a sounding board for

many of his story ideas, and introduced him

to the expat community in the south of France 

which formed the basis of several novels.

After the profound shock of his wife's death,

Ballard began in 1965 to write the stories that

became The Atrocity Exhibition, while continuing

to produce stories within the science fiction genre.

In 1967 Algis Budrys listed Ballard, Brian W.

Aldiss,Roger Zelazny, and Samuel R. Delany 

as "an earthshaking new kind of" writers, and

leaders of the New Wave. 

The Atrocity Exhibition (1969) proved controversial

- it was the subject of an obscenity trial, and

in the United States, publisherDoubleday 

destroyed almost the entire print run before it

was distributed - but it gained Ballard recognition

as a literary writer. It remains one of his iconic

works, and was filmed in 2001.

A chapter of The Atrocity Exhibition is titled

"Crash!", and in 1970 Ballard organised an

exhibition of crashed cars at the New Arts Laboratory,

simply called "Crashed Cars".

The crashed vehicles were displayed without

commentary, inspiring vitriolic responses and

vandalism.

In both the story and the art exhibition, Ballard

dealt with the sexual potential of car crashes,

a preoccupation he also explored in a short film

in which he appeared with Gabrielle Drake in

1971.

His fascination with the topic culminated in

the novel Crash in 1973.

The main character of Crash is called James

Ballard and lives in Shepperton, though other

biographical details do not match the writer,

and curiosity about the relationship between

the character and his author increased when

Ballard suffered a serious automobile accident

shortly after completing the novel.

Regardless of real-life basis, Crash, like The

Atrocity Exhibition, was also controversial

upon publication. 

In 1996, the film adaptation by David Cronenberg

 was met by a tabloid uproar in the UK, with the

 Daily Mail campaigning actively for it to be banned.

 In the years following the initial publication of Crash,

Ballard produced two further novels:

1974's Concrete Island, about a man who becomes

stranded in the waste area of a high-speed motorway,

 and High-Rise, about a modern luxury high rise

apartment building's descent into tribal warfare.

Although Ballard published several novels and

short story collections throughout the seventies

and eighties, his breakthrough into the

mainstream came only with Empire of the Sun

 in 1984, based on his years in Shanghai and

theLunghua internment camp.

It became a best-seller,was shortlisted for the

 Booker Prize and awarded the Guardian Fiction

Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. 

It made Ballard known to a wider audience,

although the books that followed failed to achieve

the same degree of success. Empire of the Sun 

was filmed by Steven Spielberg in 1987, starring

a young Christian Bale as Jim (Ballard). Ballard

himself appears briefly in the film, and he has

described the experience of seeing his childhood

memories reenacted and reinterpreted as bizarre.

Ballard continued to write until the end of his

life, and also contributed occasional journalism

and criticism to the British press.

Of his later novels, Super-Cannes (2000) was

particularly well received winning the regional 

Commonwealth Writers' Prize. 

These later novels often marked a move away

from science fiction, instead engaging with

elements of a traditional crime novel. Ballard

was offered a CBE in 2003, but refused, calling it

"a Ruritanian charade that helps to prop up

our top-heavy monarchy". 

In June 2006, he was diagnosed with terminal 

prostate cancer, which metastasised to his

spine and ribs.

The last of his books published in his lifetime

was the autobiography Miracles of Life, written

after his diagnosis. His final published short story,

"The Dying Fall", appeared in the 1996 issue

106 of Interzone, a British sci-fi magazine.

It was reproduced in The Guardian on 25 April

2009.