In The Drowned World, published in 1962, J. G. Ballard imagined the earth in the twenty-first century, stripped of its protective "ionosphere", being super-heated by the sun, its ice-caps melting and its cities under water. Like many readers since then, the TLS's anonymous reviewer was impressed, but thought that the novel did not go on to fulfil the promise of its premiss: "Vague talk of a new Adam and Eve is never developed . . .". Ballard died on April 19, 2009, with the earth very much on the way to the drowning that he imagined for it some fifty years ago.

Not many journals kept up with the prolific Ballard over the years, but the TLS has just about managed it, recognizing him in 1966 as "one of the most sensitive and enigmatic novelists of the present day", and later as a creator of "unsettling and extravagant effects" and the writer of prose "as full of energy as his subjects are increasingly drained of it". There has always been excitement about the publication of a new Ballard novels or collection of short stories. "It is difficult to overstate how far ahead of his time Ballard seemed to readers in 1956", as M. John Harrison puts it in his review of Kingdom Come in 2007.

On the other hand, there have always been criticisms of Ballard's writing. Brian Aldiss could admire The Terminal Beach as a perfect encapsulation of "subliminal terrors of the present and the austere beauties of dissociation", but he was reviewing The Atrocity Exhibition, and found it less to his taste. See below for a selection of pieces about Ballard from the TLS archives.

To read Peter Stothard's thoughts on J. G. Ballard's "Hello America", click here.

To read this week's Then and Now, which is Peter Kemp's review of "Empire of the Sun" from 1984, click here.

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