History Creator / JGBallard

* DesertPunk: ''The Burning World'' (alternatively titled ''The Drought'') is about a worldwide ecological disaster that's caused by dumping industrial waste into the ocean. This forms an oxygen-permeable barrier of saturated long-chain polymers that stops evaporation, which ends up disrupting the precipitation cycle. Following this chain of events all freshwater is gone and the entire Earth becomes a dried up husk.

* DesertPunk: ''The Burning World'' (alternatively titled ''The Drought'') is about a worldwide ecological disaster that's caused by dumping industrial waste into the ocean. This forms an oxygen-permeable barrier of saturated long-chain polymers that prevents evaporation which ends up destroying the precipitation cycle. This chain of events eradicates all freshwater sources and transforms the entire Earth into a dried up husk.

* LayeredMetropolis: "The Concentration City". This seemingly endless metropolis is an endless puzzle of streets flowing into streets and level upon level with no end in sight. The protagonist tries to find the city limits by taking a several day journey in its vast rail coach system...[[spoiler:he doesn't. After ten days of travel he ends up back where he started on the same day he left.]]

* EndlessDaytime: In "The Day of Forever", the Earth has ceased to rotate and the day and night cycle is frozen in perpetual dusk. The protagonist travels across this world, hoping to dream of a woman similar to the one in Delvaux’s surrealist painting, ‘The Echo’.

Ballard published his first novel, ''The Wind From Nowhere'' in 1961, which would become the first in a series of novels about mind-bending apocalypses. He had begun submitting stories to various sci-fi publications such as ''Magazine/NewWorlds'' and ''Magazine/ScienceFantasy'' as far back in 1956 with the stories 'Escapement' and 'Prima Belladonna', the latter of which was set in the surreal resort of ''VermilionSands''. He'd revisit the world of ''Vermilion Sands'' multiple times until 1970 and later compiled the stories into a collection of the same name. By the mid-60s, Ballard had published dozens of short stories, much of which had appeared in ''New Worlds'' magazine.

* TheSleepless: In "Manhole 69" a group of three men have their sleep surgically removed in order for the scientists studying them to determine if mankind can save hours wasted by our natural need to sleep. Despite a solid start, the neurological effects of sleep deprivation aren't taken into account and the end result is terrifying for the trio.

** Interestingly enough, there's a 1971 short film entitled ''Crash!'' (most likely after the 1969 short story). It stars Ballard and Gabrielle Drake, star of the sc-fi drama series ''[[Series/UFO1970 UFO]]'' and sister of the late musician Music/NickDrake.

** Interestingly enough, there's a 1971 short film entitled ''Crash!'' (most likely after the 1969 short story). It stars Ballard and Gabrielle Drake, star of the sc-fi drama series ''Series/UFO1970'' and sister of the late musician Music/NickDrake.

** Interestingly enough, there's a 1971 short film entitled ''Crash!'' (most likely after the 1969 short story). It stars Ballard and Gabrielle Drake, star of the sc-fi drama series 'Series/UFO1970'' and sister of the late musician Music/NickDrake.

** Interestingly enough, there's a 1971 short film entitled ''Crash!'' (most likely after the 1969 short story). It stars Ballard and Gabrielle Drake, star of the sc-fi drama ''Television/UFO1970'' and sister of the late musician Music/NickDrake.

** Interestingly enough, there's a 1971 short film entitled ''Crash!'' (most likely after the 1969 short story). It stars Ballard and Gabrielle Drake, star of the sc-fi drama ''Television/UFO'' and sister of the late musician Music/NickDrake.

* GlobalWarming: The cause of the apocalypse in ''The Drowned World''. Solar radiation causes the ice caps to melt and flood much of the world. What follows is a ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'' style journey by a group of scientists into the heart of a submerged London.

* GlobalWarming: The cause of the apocalypse in ''The Drowned World''. Solar radiation causes the ice caps to melt and flood much of the world. What follows is a Literature/HeartOfDarkness-esque journey by a group of scientists into the heart of a submerged London.

* DesertedIsland: In the 1974 novel ''Concrete Island'', an architect drives his car off a bridge and lands on the terrain sandwiched between the massive freeways. Trapped, he tries to signal for help from the cars above but they ignore him, suspecting that he's a crazy homeless man because of the state he's in. Eventually, he discovers other people living in the remains of the town that was destroyed to build the freeway. But, this being Ballard, things turn to shit very quickly for the protagonist and the others.

* DesertedIsland: In the 1974 novel ''Concrete Island'' an architect drives his car off a bridge and lands on the terrain sandwiched between the massive freeways. Trapped, he tries to signal for help from the cars above but they ignore him, suspecting that he's a crazy homeless man because of the state he's in. Eventually, he discovers other people living in the remains of the town that was destroyed to build the freeway. But, this being Ballard, things turn to shit very quickly for the protagonist and the others.

* AutoErotica: ''Crash'' follows a fictional version of Ballard and his wife as they join an eccentric group of alienated people that love staging car crashes in order to satisfy their sexual urges.

** In 1980, a group of ex-Situationists distributed the story, furnished with the Republican Party seal, to convention delegates at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit.

* LayeredMetropolis: "The Concentration City". This seemingly endless metropolis is an endless puzzle of streets flowing into streets and level upon level with no end in sight. The protagonist tries to find the city limits by taking a several day journey in its vast rail coach system...[[spoiler:he doesn't. After ten days of travel, he ends up back where he started on the same day he left.]]

* TheSleepless: In "Manhole 69" a group of three men have their sleep surgically removed in order for the scientists studying them to determine if mankind can save hours wasted by our natural need to sleep. Despite a solid start, the biological and neurological effects of sleep deprivation aren't taken into account and the end result is terrifying for the trio.