Stephen Downes

My reading of JG Ballard was exclusively of his earlier work, specifically, The Drowned World, The Wind from Nowhere, and The Drought. Ballard brought a personal realism to post-apocalyptic writing and evoked for me a clear idea of what life might be like in a world where technology and environment have both collapsed. I think people of my age, raised in a world that might descend into nuclear madness on any given day, needed some way to grapple with that prospect, and Ballard, from a unique perspective, was able to provide that.