[0x69420]

kingdom come, the last book written before his death, at once falls tremendously short of his reputation for prescience on the literal level, but exceeds with flying colours in prescience on the metaphorical level. the median-age HN reader would probably do well to start with it, as its zeitgeist will still be kicking around somewhere in your memory and so it will be in some sense maximally relatable of his bibliography. then work backwards to taste.

[twic]

I'd tentatively suggest The Concrete Island. It's not at all science-fictional, but it manages to wring a lot of weirdness out of a completely pedestrian (if you will) setting. It was written in 1974, but I think it works just as well today (just imagine his phone got broken in the accident).

[ghaff]

I'd actually recommend picking and choosing a number of his short stories. Quite a number are pretty experimental but lots of good ones.

[nervousvarun]

Good call. Personally I point people towards High-Rise which is an older book but has the benefit of being made into a pretty good relatively recent movie staring Tom Hiddleston. US perspective here, but it seems prescient in a weird Ballardian way as well w/ what may or may not be happening (who can tell unless it happens to you anymore) in Denver: https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-law-firm-repo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Rise_(novel)

[jhbadger]

I didn't like the movie of High-Rise because it changes the whole point of the book. In the movie it was conflict between the rich and poor people in the apartment tower (basically redoing Snowpiercer but in a building). In the book, it was clear this was a luxury building. Everyone is wealthy if they can afford to live there. The point was that these people were so bored with their comfortable lives that they started fighting each other for no reason.