 At university, Ballard was writing avant-garde fiction heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and surrealist painters.At this time, he wanted to become a writer as well as pursue a medical career.In May 1951, when Ballard was in his second year at Cambridge, his short story "The Violent Noon", a Hemingwayesque pastiche written to please the contest's jury, won a crime story competition and was published in the student newspaper "Varsity".