Empire of the Sun (1987)
I've never read Empire of the Sun, although I've certainly read J.G. Ballard's other novels such as Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition. Watching the film of his semi-autobiographical novel, directed by Stephen Spielberg no less, it seems almost incongruous that we are examining the early life of the famed post-modern novelist, who began as one of the progenitors of the "New Wave" of science fiction literature in the Sixties, before turning his pen to an avant-garde exploration of violence, media manipulation, and modern dystopian themes of alienation, subversion, and control. He seems always to have been asking what the cult of celebrity meant, examining our modern society and media icons in the light of our terminal march toward self-obliteration and destruction. (But the reader may pick up Crash or Atrocity and genuinely ask themselves, if they finish the books, "What the hell was he really trying to say?")
