J. G. Ballard

I'm with James Fallows on this one: I was never drawn to J. G. Ballard's futurist stuff, but Empire of the Sun, his memoir of his youth in and around Shanghai in World War II--that was a gripping read. But I'm so clueless that when I read it (about 10 years ago) I didn't even realize that it was also a movie, which, as it happens, I still haven't seen (I just noticed that a script credit goes to Tom Stoppard, which might itself be a reason to see it). Still, the novel is good enough that it almost matches this, which is high praise indeed.