Whether you embrace or reject on his behalf the label “science-fiction writer” will indicate whether you regard it as praiseful or damning, but no one reading Ballard could doubt the tidal gravity of his intellect or the stark visionary consistency of the motifs that earned him that rarest of literary awards, an adjective: Ballardian.

Your books lie on my table here, at arm’s length from me, in this old room where I sit all day: and when my head aches or wanders or strikes work, as it now or then will, I take my chance for either green-covered volume,

He had edited the paper for some years.

In the event, Carlton′s ‘worm’, Alex Jesaulenko, was comprehensively upstaged by his croweater rival, Barrie Robran, who in the end probably proved the decisive difference between the two sides.