Ballard also wrote The Drowned World (1962), Crash (1973), which was made into a 1996 movie starring Holly Hunter and James Spader. (Empire of the Sun had already been made into a movie in 1987, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring a young Christian Bale as the Ballard-like boy, Jim.) Ballard's other books include The Crystal World (1966), High-rise (1975), The Day of Creation (1987) and Cocaine Nights (1996).
He published an autobiography, Miracles of Life, in 2008; Ballard told The Times of London that he wrote the book after being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006.
He died of the cancer on 9 April 2009.