How the 20th Century's Greatest Dystopian Writer Explains Your Online Life

JG Ballard and "a logic deeper than reason"

A painting by the Belgian Surrealist Paul Delvaux. Ballard kept a large, specially commissioned Delvaux reproduction by his writing desk, feeling it represented his outlook and writing.

“Ballardian (bælˈɑːdɪən) - adjective; resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in the works of JG Ballard, including dystopian and bleak artificial landscapes, and the psychological effects of technology, social or environmental developments, and the accompanying sense of dread, alienation, and a distorted future.”

One of the ways you know that English science fiction writer J.G. Ballard is one of the greats is that his writing seems relevant in both a current and an eternal sense. He touches on essential human themes, yet his work also seems to correspond to our everyday life in the specifics - uncannily so, for a writer who’s been dead for sixteen years. Thanks to the growth in power of Big Tech, AI and the pervasiveness of Social Media we live in a more profoundly Ballardian world than he did at any time in his life. In our search to understand how we’ve got here, he is one of the essential writers we must turn to.