Some of you may have heard of J. G. Ballard---the guy who wrote Empire of the Sun the autobiographical novel about his experiences in and around World War Two as a prisoner of the Japanese, later made into a movie.
What the brief obits didn't mention was his prior career as a science fiction writer---his high literary standards as part of the "New Wave" of the 1960s and the problems he encountered therein.
Good stuff...but Empire of the Sun was the book he should have written much sooner.
Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :
Definitely.
Seems that we're losing some of the best writers in the last few years,
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
As a more general overview...nearly all the science fiction writers I like are now deceased, and I haven't embraced most of the newcomers in the same way I embraced their predecessors.
Ballard was never one of those---too "literary" for my tastes at the time---but a lot of his stuff (or what I read of it) was pretty powerful. The title of one---I won't repeat it here because it contains an obscenity---has haunted me for years though I've never seen the story itself.
Posted by Kaz (Member # 7968) on :
I read it The Empire of the Rising Sun, but so long ago I honestly remember little of it. I should probably reread it sometime along with more of Ballard's work.