Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The author JG Ballard, famed for novels such as Crash and Empire of the Sun, has died aged 78 after a long illness. His agent Margaret Hanbury said the author had been ill "for several years" and had died on Sunday morning. Despite being referred to as a science fiction writer, Jim Ballard said his books were instead "picturing the psychology of the future". His most acclaimed novel was Empire of the Sun, based on his childhood in a Japanese prison camp in China. I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on
JG Ballard
Obituary: JG Ballard JG Ballard: Your memories The author of 15 novels and scores of short stories, Ballard grew up amongst the expatriate community in Shanghai. During World War II, at the age of 12, he was interned for three years in a camp run by the Japanese. He later moved to Britain and in the early 1960s became a full-time writer. Ballard built up a passionate readership, particularly after Empire of The Sun, a fictionalised account of his childhood, was made into a film by Steven Spielberg. He said of his experiences: "I have - I won't say happy - not unpleasant memories of the camp. I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on, but at the same time we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time!" His friend and fellow author, Iain Sinclair, said Ballard had developed into a major literary figure. "He was one of the first to take up the whole idea of ecological catastrophe. He was fascinated by celebrity early on, the cult of the star and suicides of cars, motorways, edgelands of cities. "All of these things he was one of the first to create almost a philosophy of. And I think as time has gone on, he's become a major, major figure." 'Ballardian world' Director David Cronenberg brought Ballard's infamous book about the sexual desires stimulated by car crashes to the screen in the film Crash. The film caused a media stir, adding to Ballard's reputation for courting controversy. In later years he wrote other acclaimed novels such as Super-Cannes and Millennium People. Hephzibah Anderson, former fiction editor at the Daily Mail and books columnist for the Observer, said Ballard's work had anticipated life as it was now. "If you look at the start of his career, he began writing science fiction stories and we was regarded as very avant garde. "And there was a kind of violence lurking beneath the texture of these novels. And they've come to seem less and less futuristic and you know it's as if we're embodying, we're living in now a kind of Ballardian world."
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British author James Graham Ballard, known as J. G. Ballard has died at the age of 78. Ballard died on Sunday after a long battle with prostate cancer. 

According to a spokesperson, Ballard had been sick "for several years" and that it was "with great sadness" to have to make the announcement of his death. He died at the home of his long-time partner. 

Ballard is best known for writing the novels ''Crash'' in 1973 and ''Empire of the Sun'' in 1984 which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Both books  went on to be major motion pictures.

"He was a colonial figure in some senses. He had grown up in Shanghai and had very good manners. He was very generous and polite and it took a long while before he would do anything that wasn’t very controlled," said friend and author Iain Sinclair to The Times.

Ballard was born in Shanghai, China in the Shanghai International Settlement in 1930. When he was 12, he and his family were forced to live in a camp run by Japanese forces during World War II. Ballard says that he won't say happy things about his experience in the camp, but also no unpleasant ones either. In an interview with BBC News, Ballard said "I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on, but at the same time we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time."

In 1946 he moved to the UK with his sister and mother where he began to write. Twenty years later, in the 1960's, he employed himself as a full time writer. He produced his first novel in 1961 titled ''The Wind from Nowhere'' and ''The Drowned World'' just a year later.