The award-winning novelist and short story writer JG Ballard has died aged 78 after a long battle with illness.
Ballard was highly regarded but also had his critics
The author, best known for Empire of the Sun and Crash, had been ill "for several years", his agent Margaret Hanbury said.
It was "with great sadness" that he died on Sunday morning, she added.
Although regarded as a science fiction writer, Ballard said what he was really doing was "picturing the psychology of the future".
In a prolific career, ballard attracted critical acclaim and controversy in equal measure for his work.
Born in Shanghai, China, he was educated at Cambridge University before becoming an RAF pilot.
He also worked as an advert agency copywriter, encyclopaedia salesman and assistant editor of scientific journal Chemistry and Industry.
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! JG Ballard on life in occupied Shanghai
After coming to Britain, he built up a dedicated following, particularly after Empire of The Sun was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987.
The book tells the story of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai, describing his experiences of starvation, survival and death marches.
He said of his childhood: "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!"
Director David Cronenberg also brought Ballard's infamous book about the sexual desires stimulated by car crashes to the screen in the film Crash.
His more recent works include Super-Cannes and Millennium People.
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.