I wish the term Surrealist was used more often to describe authors. Some writers who are considered SF writers really are Surrealists, but are put into that category just because. Fantasy is another term that should be used to categorize writers like this, but arent, because nowadays Fantasy means Tolkien, swords, sorcery, elves, etc.
Ballard is one of them. PKD is similar in this way.
I would agree that Ballard fits more comfortably (generally speaking) under the rubric of "surrealist" than "science fiction writer", at least by the narrower definition of sf that got rather blown apart with the New Wave... but "fantasy" writer doesn't quite fit with either Ballard or Dick, in my view. And that isn't because I view fantasy under the Tolkienian or s&s sort of blinkered perception, either. I've long argued that this view of fantasy is horrendously limited, given the extreme breadth of the genre. (In fact, for a very long time, many editors -- and reputable critics -- would have classed sf as a subgenre of fantasy. Historically at least they would have had reason to do so.)
This is not to say that Ballard hasn't written fantasy; some of what he has done most certainly would fit comfortably into that category. But much of what he wrote also fits quite well under the broader definition of science fiction which has historical precedent dating to Wells or before, and it really was more in that tradition that he worked, rather than the narrower, Campbellesque school. (Though truth be told, even JWC's editorial policies had a broader approach than the strict adherence to what is deemed "Campbellian" sf would indicate.)
The problem with calling Ballard a "surrealist" is that here, too, he really doesn't quite fit. If you read much of the genuine surrealist writers, you can certainly see affinities -- and Ballard would have been the first to acknowledge that -- but it is more a matter of taking a tendency from this camp, and another from that, and yet another from a third, and so on, which would work well together for his own purposes, rather than any intent to explore surrealist territory
per se. His work would, for instance, have very little in common with, say, André Breton, Louis Aragon, George Bataille, or the Comte de Lautréamont (try comparing
Maldoror, or
The Story of the Eye, for instance, to anything by Ballard -- the
closest you're going to come would be
The Atrocity Exhibition, and that is one hell of a long way off).
So, despite some pieces which show the influence of surrealism (as with the piece mentioned in my earlier post), yet again he proves to be a writer who really defies facile categorization....
