J. G. Ballard is perhaps the most important figure to emerge from the British New Wave of science-fiction writers, whose works brought a new degree of literary sophistication and critical respectability to the genre beginning in the late 1950s. To an extent Ballard's fiction is all part of a single project to catalogue the contents of what he calls "inner space"--a psychological domain that represents an inversion of the frequent preoccupation of science-fiction writers with extraterrestrial travel. Within Ballardian inner space the dearest icons of consumer society--automobiles, movie stars, concrete buildings, and motorways--mingle with the symbolic unconscious, and their true significance is revealed. At once exotic and familiar, inner space owes more to the painters of the Surrealist movement, to whom Ballard makes frequent reference, than to his literary predecessors in the fantasy or science-fiction genres.

For Ballard, who was born in Shanghai, China, and spent part...