J.G. Ballard, Pop Art and the New Wave in Science Fiction

Although J.G. Ballard is not always associated with science fiction, he started his career writing short stories for the science fiction magazines Science Fantasy and New Worlds. He later remarked that it was only through these short stories that he discovered what sort of writer he wanted to be. 

Shortly after the publication of his first story in 1956, Ballard visited an exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery that left a lasting impression on him. Now recognised as a key moment in the emergence of Pop Art, ‘This is Tomorrow’ featured works produced by the Independent Group, which included the artists Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, Victor Pasmore, Lawrence Alloway, Nigel Henderson and Alison and Peter Smithson.  The artists formed groups, each producing an installation that represented their vision of the future. The Smithson-Henderson-Paolozzi partnership used found objects to depict the remnants of civilization after a nuclear disaster, while Richard Hamilton’s collage, Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, presented a world entirely constructed from popular advertising. Ballard was particularly inspired by these pieces, and the way they interpreted the modern cultural landscape. 

The exhibition reinforced his belief that artists were ahead of writers in acknowledging the significance of the media and accelerated developments in technology. Ballard explored similar themes in his own writing, which he explained as a desire to decode the myths of everyday experience. This experience was intimately bound up with a fascination for material culture, an aspect of Pop Art that Ballard admired. He observed that ‘Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future’. 

Because they shared many interests and influences, Ballard and Paolozzi later became collaborators and friends. The art and literature journal Ambit, edited by Martin Bax, was a testing ground for their experimental ideas. Paolozzi’s imagery appeared in Ballard’s notorious fake advertising campaign and his use of assemblage and collage techniques was mirrored by Ballard in the form of short stories such as ‘You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe’, which would later appear in the novel The Atrocity Exhibition. 

April 1966 ed. of New Worlds

1990 ed. of The Atrocity Exhibitio. 

Perhaps because of these influences, in the 1960s Ballard was linked to the ‘New Wave’ avant-garde science fiction movement. Taking its name from the New Wave in French cinema, the movement’s writers were distinguished by their preoccupation with popular culture, often experimenting with unconventional literary styles. However, because he was very much immersed in the culture he was writing about, Ballard was generally dismissive of attempts to locate his work within a particular literary tradition, at the risk of neglecting its populist origins. 

Ballard was never a conventional science fiction writer. In many ways he saw himself as an observer of the present day, finding more inspiration in contemporary society than in the dream of a distant future. Stating his influences as the surrealists, advertising, the mass media and developments in science and technology, Ballard pushed the boundaries of science fiction with his concept of ‘inner space’. Unlike the intergalactic fantasies of outer space, Ballard described inner space as ‘the internal landscape of tomorrow that is a transmuted image of the past’, a form of speculative fiction that reflected the obsessions and imagined landscapes of his characters.

This post adapts text from the booklet Visions of the Future: The Art of Science Fiction by Paul Whittle and Liz Stainforth.