What an interesting read is the first chapter - life in Shanghai before the Japanese invasion of 1937. What makes it particularly interesting for me is that my father served with the Far East Fleet in the cruiser HMS Cornwall and the destroyer HMS Wild Swan on the China Station from 1931-1933 (a year in each ship), so this first chapter is ideal for giving an overview of life ashore for the European community; the Royal Navy was mostly based at Wei Hai Wei (Liugong Island) from 1930-1940. ( )

An eminently readable autobiography from a man who's fiction can sometimes be enigmatic, sometimes deliberately intended to shock, showing numerous repeated themes and tropes. Where did those themes come from? Since the publication of Empire of the Sun it has been clear that the strongest and most overt of them relate to his childhood experiences of Shanghai during WWII. This book demonstrates that most of the others date back to the same period of his life - and most of the remainder to no later than when he left formal education behind.

Despite a frank description of the important events in his life, Ballard remains himself an enigma to me after reading this. I don't know or understand the character of the man a lot better than before I started. I usually find letters reveal character more readily than biography and it turns out this is no exception. Nevertheless, this is an interesting work for its childhood eyewitness account of 1930s Shanghai and wartime internment as well as the impressions of post-war Britain through the eyes of an ex-pat child going to the old country for the first time. ( )

This short, concise, brilliantly sharp commentary on Ballard's own life from childhood to the moments before his own death in his home is probably the most shocking and tear-jerking autobiographies I've ever read.

He doesn't embellish anything. He plainly tells us that his life as Jim in Empire of the Sun is true as far as it goes, made into a more fantastic story that is then later turned into the movie, but more than that, he briefly outlines the rest of his science-fiction career.

Not the what-if SF of his contemporaries, but the what-next.

I really appreciate the idea. I've read some of his novels and really enjoyed them. Very imaginative works. But, like the author himself, I'm surprised to have liked his closer-to-home work about his childhood in Shanghai during WWII best.

This is not to say I am going to stop here. I'm a big SF fan and I've just decided, after reading such a sharp history, that his writing should never be forgotten. I am going to read everything of his I can get my hands on.

It's important. He may be repeating the same themes in variations, but there is nothing about them that isn't NECESSARY. Rebirth, hope, dream-like calculation, intense connections between sexuality and violence, and, of course, WHAT COMES NEXT.

He was an author who should never be forgotten. ( )

Ballard wrote this after being diagnosed with the cancer that killed him. And, it shows. He is quite forthcoming and very frank with his remembrances: early life spent in Shanghai with its mini nationalistic enclaves, his family internment by the Japanese, his move to an England he really knew little of, attempts at finding a career, his seduction by science fiction, and his family (his love for his children inspired the title). His description of his introduction to and falling in love with science fiction encapsulates my own feelings. Bravo, Mr. Ballard! ( )

This proved to be an excellent follow-up to Empire of the Sun, documenting many additional details of young Jim's childhood in Shanghai and later in life. Frankly I wish the book was longer. Here Ballard gives us additional details before the Japanese takeover and the initial 1937 invasion and to me it was a fascinating picture in addition to giving me a broader look at this crucial period in Asia. It was also interesting to see where Ballard had rearranged and omitted experiences to craft the semi-true story of Empire of the Sun. What was most surprising to me was how much the internment camp material was fictionalized. Ballard assigned to himself many things that had happened to people around him. The biggest change, he notes here, is that he decided to fictionalize being in a different camp from his parents. This was actually a friend of his at the camp in that situation. To me the other big change was that in real life Ballard and his family (he had a sister also in real life who is not in Empire of the Sun) were among the last of the families interred and it was a very simple and orderly process, unlike the descriptions in the book which were incredibly horrific. I also really was moved by the passages here where Ballard revisits China and the internment camp about 45 years after he left, and some of the ghosts were finally able to rest.

Equally interesting here was Ballard trying to find his way in post-war Britain, a place he knew only from books since he had been born and lived in China his entire life. Ballard gave us glimpses of the various events and forces around his life that eventually shaped his writing.

Ballard wrote this while he was dying of prostate cancer - I think of it as gift to readers and history. Absolutely recommended for anyone who is a fan of Empire of the Sun or other Ballard novels. I was quite affected by this book. Now I need to get to his novel "The Kindness of Women" before too long.

A thought that frequently came to me while reading this and 'Empire of the Sun' was how readable Ballard's prose was. I had read some of his short fiction decades ago and frequently disliked it.

Review written in 2016 ( )