English novelist (1930-2009)
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind--mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
The two parachutes fell towards the burial mounds. Already a squad of Japanese soldiers in a truck with a steaming radiator sped along the perimeter road, on their way to kill the pilots. Jim wiped the dust from his Latin primer and waited for the rifle shots.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
To his surprise he felt a moment of regret, of sadness that his quest for his mother and father would soon be over. As long as he searched for them he was prepared to be hungry and ill, but now that the search had ended he felt saddened by the memory of all he had been through, and of how much he had changed. He was closer now to the ruined battlefields and this fly-infested truck, to the nine sweet potatoes in the sack below the driver's seat, even in a sense to the detention center, than he would ever be again to his house in Amherst Avenue.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
Usually Jim devoured the newsreels, part of the propaganda effort mounted by the British Embassy to counter the German and Italian war films being screened in the public theaters and Axis clubs of Shanghai. Sometimes the Pathé newsreels from England gave Jim the impression that, despite their unbroken series of defeats, the British people were thoroughly enjoying the war.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
The city was a vast and stationary carousel, forever boarded by millions of would-be passengers who took their seats, waited and then dismounted.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
As I left the motorway behind me, the prospect of actually turning the key in my father's front door began to loom in the windscreen like a faintly threatening head-up display. A large part of him would still be there--the scent of his body on the towels and clothes, the contents of his laundry basket, the odd smell of old bestsellers on his bookshelves. But his presence would be matched by my absence, the gaps that would be everywhere like emlpty cells in a honeycomb, human voids that his own son had never been able to fill when he abandoned his family for a universe of skies.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
These days even reality has to look artificial.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
He welcomed the air raids, the noise of the Mustangs as they swept over the camp, the smell of oil and cordite, the deaths of the pilots, and even the likelihood of his own death. Despite everything he knew he was worth nothing. He twisted his Latin primer, trembling with a secret hunger that the war would so eagerly satisfy.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
It disappointed Jim that none of his fellow prisoners was interested in the war. It would have helped to keep up their spirits, a task which Jim was finding more and more difficult.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
The residents had eliminated both past and future, and for all their activity, they existed in a civilized and eventless world.
J. G. BALLARD
Running Wild
We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us. Options multiply around us, and we live in an almost infantile world where any demand, any possibility, whether for life-styles, travel, sexual roles and identities, can be satisfied instantly.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
I accepted that a new kind of hate had emerged, silent and disciplined, a racism tempered by loyalty cards and PIN numbers. Shopping was now the model for all human behavior, drained of emotion and anger.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
They're not really bombs -- they're acoustic provocations.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
He waited for the roll-call to end, reflecting on the likely booty attached to a dead American pilot. Soon enough, one of the Americans would be shot down into Lunghua Camp. Jim tried to decide which of the ruined buildings would best conceal his body. Carefully eked out, the kit and equipment could be bartered with Basie for extra sweet potatoes for months to come, and even perhaps a warm coat for the winter. There would be sweet potatoes for Dr. Ransome, whom Jim was determined to keep alive. He rocked on his heels and listened to an old woman crying in the nearby ward. Through the window was the pagoda at Lunghua Airfield. Already the flak tower appeared in a new light. For another hour Jim stood in line with the missionary widows, watched by the sentry. Dr. Ransome and Dr. Bowen had set off with Sergeant Nagata to the commandant's office, perhaps to be interrogated. The guards moved around the silent camp with their roster boards, carrying out repeated roll-calls. The war was about to end and yet the Japanese were obsessed with knowing exactly how many prisoners they held. Jim closed his eyes to calm his mind, but the sentry barked at him, suspecting that Jim was about to play some private game of which Sergeant Nagata would disapprove.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
Gazing out at the placid sea of bricky gables, at the pleasant parks and school playgrounds, I felt a pang of resentment, the same pain I remembered when my wife kissed me fondly, waved a little shyly from the door of our Chelsea apartment, and walked out on me for good. Affection could reveal itself in the most heartless moments.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Remember ... the middle class have to be kept under control. They understand that, and police themselves. Not with guns and gulags, but with social codes. The right way to have sex, treat your wife, flirt at tennis parties or start an affair. There are unspoken rules we all have to learn.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
Selfish men make the best lovers. They're prepared to invest in the women's pleasures so that they can collect an even bigger dividend for themselves.
J. G. BALLARD
Cocaine Nights
Kill a politician and you're tied to the motive that made you pull the trigger.
J. G. BALLARD
Millennium People
His eyes measured the little chamber. How two people could survive in so small a space was as difficult to grasp as the conventions in contract bridge. Perhaps there was some simple key that would solve the problem, and he would have the subject of another book.
J. G. BALLARD
Empire of the Sun
Religions emerged too early in human evolution — they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end.
J. G. BALLARD
Cocaine Nights