Who will be the next JG Ballard

May 15, 2009 10:54 AM

JG Ballard was often said to offer a prophetic vision of the future. But now he's dead. Who will take over from him?

HG Wells. George Orwell. JG Ballard. William Gibson. Each wrote prophetic works of speculative fiction. With the exception of Gibson the rest are dead. Who among contemporary authors can offer the equivelant visions of the future?

posted by MrMerlot to media & arts (15 comments total)

K.W. Jeter fits the bill pretty well.
posted by Aquaman at 10:57 AM on May 15

Vernor Vinge. Kim Stanley Robinson. Rudy Rucker.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:04 AM on May 15

Raymond Kurzweil
posted by nitsuj at 11:12 AM on May 15

Margaret Atwood. Some things she wrote in The Handmaid's Tale in 1985 have already come true, in a way.
posted by lampoil at 11:40 AM on May 15

Mike Judge.
posted by Kirklander at 11:45 AM on May 15 [2 favorites]

Another vote for Atwood. Handmaid's Tail and Oryx & Crake have many, many prescient aspects, and she's one of the few authors who write in that genre who is as interested in social problems and social change as much as technology.
posted by luriete at 11:48 AM on May 15

Atwood's also got The Year of the Flood coming out in September, which appears to be linked to Oryx & Crake.

Other living authors who have written novels about the future: David Mitchell, Geoff Ryman, Sarah Hall, Rupert Thomson.
posted by gnomeloaf at 12:02 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]

I agree with BitterOldPunk. Also add Stephenson, especially his "Diamond Age".
posted by PickeringPete at 12:10 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]

one future, easily visited, paths already paved & swept: Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall
posted by jammy at 12:58 PM on May 15

Warren Ellis
posted by nameless.k at 1:04 PM on May 15

I second Mike Judge
posted by larry_darrell at 1:27 PM on May 15

I think your question is a little off. We can't start naming prophetic authors unless we already know what the future will have in it. Those prophetic authors you listed are mostly dead for a reason--we're far enough along that we can say if they were right or not!

There are tons of authors out there, published and otherwise, who may very well have what will turn out to be deep insights into the future--but the title of prophet must be earned over time. Otherwise, it's no different than any other fiction.
posted by Phyltre at 1:48 PM on May 15

You're throwing Ballard in with a lot of futurist sci-fi authors, which isn't really a good comparison. William Gibson has been doing more shades-of-now fiction lately, but I still think it's not a good equivalence. With the exception of his short stories, most of Ballard's works dealt with speculative fiction, putting characters into abnormal (or rigid extensions of normal) social situations and ran with it from there. Ballard, to me, was more of a Borges or Calvino type of writer in the mainstream of his work.

Although I haven't finished it, books like Cormac McCarthy's The Road would be worth a look, and although the flavor was different, the morality plays in No Country for Old Men isn't entirely distant from a Ballardian landscape. For near-futurism, Bruce Sterling's recent White Fungus story apes the style a little.
posted by mikeh at 2:31 PM on May 15 [2 favorites]

Charles Stross
posted by Phssthpok at 2:49 PM on May 15

You're throwing Ballard in with a lot of futurist sci-fi authors Really? I'd would only describe Gibson in those terms.

Phyltre: People talked of Ballard's "phrophetic" qualities at least two decades before his death.

But thanks for all your replies
posted by MrMerlot at 5:52 AM on May 16