J.G. Ballard: Conversations
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 - 19 April 2009)  was an English novelist and short story writer who was a  prominent  part of the science fiction New Wave movement. His  best-known novels are the controversial Crash, an  exploration of sexual  fetishism connected to automobile accidents, and the  loosely autobiographical Empire of the Sun, about his  childhood  internment by the Japanese during World War II after the  invasion and conquest of Shanghai, where Ballard was born  in the  International Settlement. Both books were adapted into  films, by David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg  respectively. So distinctive was his work that the adjective "Ballardian"  entered the language, defined by the Collins English  Dictionary  as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in  J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian  modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the  psychological effects of technological, social or  environmental developments." Ballard was diagnosed with prostate cancer in June 2006,  from which he died in London in April 2009.