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J. G. Ballard
(15 Nov 1930 - 19 Apr 2009)
English novelist whose work includes science fiction short stories and novels. He also wrote the somewhat autobiographical, best-selling book Empire of the Sun (1984) which was reinterpreted in a movie of the same name released in 1987.
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Science Quotes by J. G. Ballard (7 quotes)
Across the communication landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy.
— J. G. Ballard
In the Introduction to the French edition (1984) of Crash (1974),
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time, like 'Rite of Spring' in Disney's Fantasia ... our internal devils may destroy and renew us through the technological overload we've invoked.
— J. G. Ballard
Interview in Heavy Metal (Apr 1971). Reprinted in Re/Search, No. 8/9 (1984).
Everything is becoming science fiction; From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century
— J. G. Ballard
'Fictions of Every Kind'. In Books and Bookmen (Feb 1971).
I feel that, in a sense, the writer knows nothing any longer. He has no moral stance. He offers the reader the contents of his own head, a set of options and imaginative alternatives. His role is that of a scientist, whether on safari or in his laboratory, faced with an unknown terrain or subject. All he can do is to devise various hypotheses and test them against the facts.
— J. G. Ballard
Crash (1973, 1995), Introduction. In Barry Atkins, More Than A Game: the Computer Game as a Fictional Form (2003), 144.
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
— J. G. Ballard
In the Introduction to the French edition (1984) of Crash (1974),
The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermonuclear weapons systems and soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudoevents, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century—sex and paranoia.
— J. G. Ballard
Crash (1973, 1995), catalogue notes. In J. G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women (2007), 221.
The only truly alien planet is Earth.
— J. G. Ballard
In 'Which Way to Inner Space?', New Worlds (May 1962). Quoted in The Riverside Dictionary of Biography (2004), 54.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
