“I take for granted that for the imaginative writer, the exercise of the imagination is part of the basic process of coping with reality, just as actors need to act all the time to make up for some deficiency in their sense of themselves.”

English novelist and short-story writer

James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short-story writer, satirist, and essayist. He became known for fiction that probes the uneasy ties between psychology, technology, sex, and mass media, and for work that often challenged readers. He first became linked with New Wave science fiction through post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962). Later, he drew controversy with The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the 1968 story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan", and with Crash (1973), a novel about car-crash fetishists.