Ballardian

Aida Young, the producer who commissioned J.G. Ballard for perhaps the most bizarre assignment of his life, died on August 12 of this year. According to David Pringle:

To me … she is most notable as the woman who commissioned J. G. Ballard, probably circa 1967, to write the “treatment” for a movie which eventually appeared in 1970 as _When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth_. According to JGB, she had read _The Drowned World_ and, since that contained lots of mud and ferns and whatnot, and even some mention of dinosaurs, she thought he would be just the man to pen a follow-up to Hammer’s _One Million Years BC_ (1966).

The fact that _When Dinosaurs…_, when it eventually appeared, gave screen credit to one “J. B. Ballard” kind of belies the notion that she was _very_ familiar with JGB’s work — but, what the hell, maybe it was someone else’s error; Aida was only the Producer, after all.