J. G. Ballard

Ballard's father was a chemist at a British textile firm who became the managing director of the firm's subsidiaries in Shanghai—so Ballard was born and raised in Shanghai. In 1943, Ballard and his family were interned in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, an internment camp for Allied civilians. He spent the remainder of the war there, and his experience in the camp inspired his most famous novel, Empire of the Sun. After the war, Ballard moved to England with his mother and his sister. He began studying medicine at King's College in 1949 with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist. However, while at school, Ballard wrote a great deal of avant-garde fiction, some of which was published in university magazines and newspapers. He soon abandoned his medical studies, completed a year at Queen Mary College to study literature, and after leaving the program, joined the Royal Air Force. He trained in Canada, where he was introduced to American science fiction. After marrying his wife in 1955 and returning to England, he published several short stories in the magazine New Worlds. He published his first novel, The Wind from Nowhere, in 1960 after deciding to write fulltime. He published The Drowned World next, in 1962, which established him as a prominent figure in New Wave science fiction. His wife died suddenly in 1964, and Ballard raised their three children alone after her death. Ballard continued to write until his death from prostate cancer in 2009.