BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Obituary: JG Ballard

Ballard's first novel, The Drowned World, published in 1962, charted the psychological breakdown of a group of scientists examining a London waterlogged by the melting of the polar icecaps. He followed this impressive debut with works like The Wind from Nowhere and The Drought, pioneering novels dealing with ecological disaster. Poetic or pornographic? The death in 1964 of Ballard's wife Helen pro