Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there. - J. G. Ballard

He walked into the bathroom, wincing at himself in the mirror, that always more tired older brother.

But a lottery isn't meaningless. Someone has to win.

The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia…In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way.