RIP J.G. Ballard
Jeff VanderMeer • April 19th, 2009 @ 11:42 am • Uncategorized
Crap crap crap crap. J.G. Ballard is dead. What a great writer. I especially loved the short stories, especially the ones that totally rewired your brain, made you see space and time differently. Crap.
UPDATE: My Omnivoracious appreciation.
April 19, 2009 at 11:48 am
Damn.
April 19, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Wish it wasn’t true. I got the news via text message from a friend, who I assumed had gotten it from the wire services. But it seems it probably came via a friend of the Ballards on facebook and then the news spread. I sure do wish it wasn’t true.
April 19, 2009 at 12:51 pm
[...] Jeff VanderMeer is reporting that J.G. Ballard is dead. If that last sentence doesn’t cause your heart to sink to your feet, then get thee to a bookstore or a library and check the man’s work out immediately. Ballard was one of the greats: an imaginative giant, a profoundly erudite iconoclast, one of those rare talents who came up with a warped concept if it was wild and provided the speculative heft needed to keep a thought experiment going. And I hope to have more to say about the man as soon as I can collect my thoughts more coherently. [...]
April 19, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I still can’t find any news stories reporting it.
Horrible news though. :(
April 19, 2009 at 1:42 pm
The source is unimpeachable, unfortunately.
April 19, 2009 at 2:06 pm
[...] Jeff Vandermeer, JG Ballard US-Autor Jeff Vandermeer (Shriek) berichtet gerade auf seinem Blog, dass der britische Schriftsteller J. G. Ballard heute gestorben ist. Die traurige Nachricht sei [...]
April 19, 2009 at 2:17 pm
@Aishwarya : I couldn’t either, but I’ve been pointed at the Beeb since.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8007331.stm
April 19, 2009 at 2:53 pm
One of the few science fiction writers who did actually predict the future in a meaningful way.
April 19, 2009 at 3:24 pm
This is really very sad news. Drat.
April 19, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I went out for a walk; my father told me when I got home. His memory for the strangest of blessings.
April 19, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Very sad news, indeed. I’ve only read a collection of his early short stories, but I think I’m going to be placing an order shortly for some of his other works.
April 19, 2009 at 5:33 pm
[...] One of the great intellectual inspirations of my life has died. [...]
April 20, 2009 at 8:03 pm
As we say here in Brazil, CARALHO! (“Fuck me!”, in a non-literal translation). I was in Rio visiting my parents and didn´t enter the Web. Brazilian TV just “broke” the news a couple of hours ago, and they mispronounced his name (they said Ballárd, as if he were French! couldelamerde, as the Merovingian (or maybe Ballard himself) would say.
Yes, I´m pissed off. He was one of the greatest to me.