“Ex-centric” is an excellent neologism that appears in D. Harlan Wilson’s compact biography of J.G. Ballard. The author was never in society’s “center” (except when Steven Spielberg adapted Empire of the Sun). Wilson argues against critics who propose that Ballard, who surfaced in 1950s sci-fi, left science fiction behind (Ballard also asserted that he “abandoned the genre”). The point may be that reality has subsumed science fiction’s brightest dreams and worst nightmares. As a writer, Ballard was given to nightmares, especially in dystopian settings that seem disconcertingly contemporary. He was pessimistic about the ways technology was transforming society—how media and capitalism transmogrified people into machines of consumption. Wilson’s account hits all the major themes including Ballard’s surrealistic exploration of unknown worlds in “inner space.”
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