Word: ballardian
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Aside from Charles Dickens or Franz Kafka, not many novelists get their own adjective. But there is Ballardian, in Collins English Dictionary: "Resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J.G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes[an error occurred while processing this directive] and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." A mouthful, but Ballard has earned every word of it. In 20 novels and 20 story collections over his half-century as a writer, he has created an anti-utopian gulag of ostensibly placid communities - island resorts, luxury apartment towers...
...first SF writer to realize that there was something basically lunatic about space travel. Ballard never predicted events or devices; instead, he described future sensibilities--how it might feel, what it might mean. A bizarre contemporary event like the paparazzi car-crash death of Princess Diana is perfectly Ballardian. No flow chart, no equation, no profit projection could ever have predicted that, but if you've read Ballard, you swiftly recognize the smell of it. I daresay that's the best the SF genre will ever do--and no more should ever be asked...
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