In his 1967 short story, “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” British writer J.G. Ballard prophesied Reagan’s ascent to the American presidency. He described Reagan sweeping into office on the shoulders of an adoring public, a media-doped public incapable of distinguishing the cowboy actor’s real-world identity from the rugged heroism of the do-gooders he portrayed onscreen. Living to see the future you’ve predicted come to pass, as Ballard has, is only cool if your predictions were optimistic.

Ballard is a sci-fi writer of the old school, one for whom the genre is not a constricting ghetto but a dangerous license to explore. In his fiction, technology provides nothing beyond new and more bizarre outlets for our primitive urges, allowing the dirty and dull parts of human nature deeper, richer and more efficient expression. Personal computers? The grotesque extremes of Internet pornography. Flying cars? The claustrophobia of three-dimensional gridlock. “The future is going to be boring,” Ballard wrote. “The suburbanisation of the planet will continue, and the suburbanisation of the soul will follow soon after.” His is an uncomfortably familiar dystopia.

J.G. Ballard: Conversations (San Francisco, 2005) is the latest dispatch from the hell-raising subculture documentarians at RE/ Search Publications. Between its covers, J.G. Ballard engages in exactly what the title promises with RE/ Search’s taste-making head honcho V. Vale and a few other well-informed fans. These aren’t interviews. All parties involved have plenty to say, though his exceptional keenness and the respect accorded him make Ballard the clear focus. The topics range from writing and modern art to media and politics, all the way up through George W’s ostensible 2004 re-election, and Ballard at 75 isn’t conciliatory or complacent. He’s a thoughtful and eloquent speaker, critical without being cranky and restrained without being understated.

On every page, phrases the editor finds pithy or intriguing are distractingly boldfaced. These sprinkles of emphasis break up dense paragraphs of rumination and add another layer of texture, but they also call attention to how meandering and unfocused portions of the conversations are. Topics bubble up and disappear in the stew - Ballard praises female science-fiction writers for breaking the genre out of stagnation, but the conversation moves on before he names names - and there’s a lot of small-talk that’s more pleasant than edifying. How’s the latest book selling? Good, good. And the kids?

In a couple sections, Vale speaks not with Ballard but about Ballard with others, including Ballard’s archivist, David Pringle. Pringle is insightful, but some of the third-party conversations are creepily adoring, like 10-year-olds discussing Batman. Some of the people who speak with Ballard, specifically Mark Pauline, are annoying. Ballard overcomes interruptions - "I was in London once! I saw a Tom Stoppard play in Piccadilly Circus!" - with commendable serenity.

Besides speculative fiction, Ballard has also written semi-autobiographically. In The Kindness of Women and, more famously, Empire of the Sun, Ballard turns his narrative gifts on his personal history. While Conversations is cozily jammed with useful supplementary material, including a timeline of Ballard’s works, a reading list of books Ballard recommends and an all-important index, it does lack a capsule bio of its subject. Readers who aren’t already interested in Ballard aren’t given a snappy summary of why they ought to be.

Spielberg’s 1987 blockbuster Empire of the Sun made Ballard the memoirist a nice chunk of change, but Ballard the bleeding-edge fiction writer hasn’t much penetrated popular culture. It’s a little puzzling considering the author to whom he’s most often compared, William S. Burroughs, is a celebrity icon. David Cronenberg’s squeamish fascination with remixing the body made him an apposite director for the junk-chilled sexual hellscapes of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, but his sterile adaptation of Ballard’s Crash is notable only for breaking the porn industry’s monopoly on unwatchably dull films full of fucking. Musically, Ballard’s heyday of influence was 25 years ago, when gloom cookie Ian Curtis borrowed a Ballard title (Atrocity Exhibition) to give an unrelated Joy Division song intellectual burnish, and Robert Calvert of the immortal Hawkwind read the Ballard thriller High-Rise, distilled it to its thematic essence, and righteously rocked it out.

Ballard’s prose is tight, effective and erudite, like a less indulgent Anthony Burgess. He’s developed neither obvious stylistic trademarks nor a public persona, which is among the reasons we’re unlikely to witness him shucking and jiving through Gap, Nike or even Apple Computer advertisements; in 2003, he disgustedly refused a medal from his nation’s Queen.

Reading these discussions, however, it’s clear that he hasn’t missed a lick. He comes across not as a bemused elder statesman, but as a canny culture-war vet with his sleeves still rolled up, engaged and enthusiastic. His interlocutors variously approach him as a man of letters, a media critic, a political analyst and a hoary oracle, and Ballard gamely takes on whatever role he’s assigned, proving a comfortable and cogent conversationalist across the board.

Conversations isn’t essential reading, but it’s interesting, thought-provoking and an excellent companion to Ballard’s novels, whether you’ve already read them or are only beginning. Warmer than an interview, livelier than a lecture, Conversations does for Ballard’s oeuvre what an in-depth commentary track does for a DVD.

Damien Weaver damienw@localnet.com