With the passing years, I’ve come to recognize that this was Ballard’s true calling—not as a writer of imaginative works, but as a genuine futurist. This is even evident in his novels.
~ Ted Gioia, from How Did a Censored Writer from the 1970s Predict the Future with Such Uncanny Accuracy?
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This is where I admit that I’m not sure if I’ve ever read any of Ballard’s works—although it seems that if I had read them I’d surely remember them?
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This planet is genuinely strange. If we were all flown to the moon or to Mars and walked around on them, they wouldn’t seem that strange to us because there would be no yardsticks or anything to measure their strangeness by—they’re just vast museums of geology. Whereas the Earth is a deranged zoo, and somebody left the doors of the cages open. We have real strangeness because we can measure the degree to which things are or are not what they ought to be.
~ J. G. Ballard
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