Ballard died yesterday in his last car crash

Well, actually he died two days ago from cancer, but somehow the above headline seems appropriate. Interesting character, he was. His early works (The Wind from Nowhere, The Drowned World, etc) were reminiscent of John Wyndham, but somewhere along the line he took a turn for the weird. Not that that's a bad thing, of course. Try reading Crash (or watching Cronenberg's film version, for that matter); you'll never look at a car the same way again.