James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for his psychologically provocative works of fiction. Ballard explored the complex relationships between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass media. He first became associated with the New Wave science fiction genre through his post-apocalyptic novels, such as The Drowned World (1962), but later gained political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the controversial story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) and the novel Crash (1973), centered...

In 1984, Ballard won broad critical recognition for his war novel Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical tale of a British boy's experiences during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. The novel was later adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg. Ballard's journey from youth to mid-age is chronicled in The Kindness of Women (1991), and his autobiography Miracles of Life (2008). Several of Ballard's early novels have been adapted into films, including Crash (1996), directed by David Cronenberg, and High-Rise (2015), directed by Ben Wheatley.

The term Ballardian is used to describe works reminiscent of Ballard's novels and stories, especially those depicting dystopian modernity, bleak landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social, or environmental developments. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography...