JG Ballard was in the news in 1973 for his novel Crash and I had no idea of the controversy the book created. Many considered it to be utterly pornographic. Then I saw the 1996 Cronenberg movie. After which I read the book. But why did I ever read the book? I suppose it’s because I presumed the movie was more extreme than the book. I was horrified even though I classified the movie as urban science fiction. But it was more Alien than Barbarella. Before seeing the movie, I didn’t know there was a word for a car-crash sex fetish. I was intrigued that symphorophiliacs existed at all. Sometimes reality offers things even more strange than a vampire. And since I lived under the flight path to Heathrow at the time, I briefly wondered if there was a word for plane-crash fetishists.
