I just finished reading the 77-year-old Ballard's newly-published autobiography, "Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton", wherein this shocking news is revealed in the final two pages, almost parenthetically: in 2006, Ballard was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. His memoir will, in all probability, be his last book.

I'm absolutely devastated by the news. Ballard has been my favourite writer now for the past two decades, if not longer, and the thought of being left alone without his distinctively incisive voice to guide me through the increasingly psychotic landscape of the 21st Century is a deeply depressing one.

Apologies for introducing this gloomy note - it's an absurdly selfish response to a situation that in no way "belongs" to me - but I felt others here might want to know. We should take some comfort from the fact that he is, apparently, receiving the best medical care.

Sad news. :(

Crash is one of my three favorite contemporary novels (along with Blood Meridian and American Psycho).

Ballard certainly has inimitable way of disecting the psyche of Modern Western Civilization, that's concise and lucid and simultaneously hilarious and horrific.

I'm surprised that More of Ballard's works haven't been made into films, but then again his works are so extreme and transgressive.

In addition to CRASH, Cronenberg's SHIVERS (1975) definitely inhabits a Ballardian universe. (see Ballard's High-Rise (also 1975)). Jonathan's Weiss' ATROCITY EXHIBITION is another wonderful adaptation of a Ballard work.

I read Ballard's autobiographical "Empire of the Sun," about his boyhood experiences in wartime Shanghai and subsquent internment in a Japanese prison camp, intended as a prelude to seeing Spielberg's film. The book is great, especially in its sections on the boy's making his way alone in his deserted Shanghai neighborhood before the Japanese finally get him, and later in his accounts of how the prisoners had to make all kinds of bargains to scrounge up enough food to survive on in the camp. I never did see Spielberg's film.

I guess I'll have to find and read BLOOD MERIDIAN...

Ballard is my favorite living novelist, too. CRASH may be my favorite novel, certainly by an English-speaking author. I haven't read the new memoir yet, but I always make a point of buying each new Ballard as it comes out -- usually the UK edition, which comes out first. I found the last one tired (now understandably), but I loved COCAINE NIGHTS and SUPER-CANNES. I highly recommend the Re/Search books of his CONVERSATIONS and QUOTATIONS; the latter, particularly, seems to me the literary analogy of a Krell machine. You can open that baby up at random and give your mind a Superball spike.

Ballard's work will live forever.

I enjoyed reading Ballard's THE DROUGHT, whose protagonist I had a hard time not seeing as Edward Judd.

Oh shit shit shit. My current read, coincidentally, is Ballard's "The Crystal World." Even when he's off, Ballard is so much better than most. Thank god he wrote a LOT! What horrible news.

I'll chime in and say that "Crash" is absolutely exemplary and probably my favorite Ballard novel as well. I have also always wondered how much Cronenberg was influenced by "High Rise" when making "Shivers." Read and watch, and see if you don't agree.

Oh, this is truly devastating! Thank you, Steve, for letting us know.

. . . writer/director Vincenzo Natali (CUBE) has been listed on the imdb for quite some time as working on a movie of HIGH RISE - this is one I really hope gets made as it seems a great story for a film . . . I think I have read everything by Ballard over the years and was even lucky enough to meet him here in Seattle several years ago when he actually made a U.S. book tour - he was kind enough to sign lots of British first editions of his work I had collected over the years and remarked I had some that he no longer owned . . . first we received bad news about Harold Pinter, now Ballard - the good news is that we will always have those plays to see and those novels/short stories to read and, hopefully, they will both be with us for some time yet . . .

Sad news, as I'm an admirer. If anything, Ballard seems to me strangely undervalued -- I think he's a much more gifted writer than William Burroughs, to pull a rough peer off of the top of my head.

To hook it into movies, anyone who enjoys Cronenberg would probably like High Rise, wherein a new condominium development essentially dehumanizes it's inhabitants to a kind of "Lord of the Flies" brutish tribalism. Very evocative stuff.

doug

At the time I interviewed Cronenberg for VIDEODROME, he had not read ANY Ballard. I actually have a recording of me recommending CRASH to him. (Some men are born great; some men have greatness thrust upon them; some men bypass greatness to thrust it upon others.)

There are similarities between HIGH RISE and SHIVERS, but it's a matter of Cronenberg and Ballard pulling similar things out of the zeitgeist of their times. Both works were released the same year, 1975.

I'm another fan of Ballard's and like Brian, read EMPIRE OF THE SUN around the time of the Spielberg film, but I think I read THE DROWNED WORLD before that. After watching most of the supplements on the BLADE RUNNER ultimate collection, I was thinking about Philip K. Dick and what a great body of work he left behind, most of which has remained untouched by Hollywood. While Ballard hasn't written as much as PKD, very little of what he has written has been adapted. Why do you suppose that is? His disaster novels seem ripe for exploitation.