The first thing to say about J.G. Ballard is not that he is among our finest writers of science fiction but that he is among our finest writers of fiction tout court period. Ballard himself might retort that, granted the first claim, the second is redundant, since the only important fiction being produced today is science fiction (or the fiction of the untrammeled imagination, or of hypothesis, or of the metaphysical pushing to the limit of scientific datum: unsatisfactorily as it is, we always end up with science fiction).
— Anthony Burgess, from his introduction to The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
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