As a 15 year old and avid science fiction reader, I used to badger my English Lit teacher constantly. He always maintained that Ballard was one of very few SF writers he liked and one of the few that he felt were good writers on a technical level. (I haven't read the article yet, but I sense some irony in the air)
I still disagree with his definitions but Ballard is definitely special.
I always felt like those who were good at "writing, on a technical level" never had any interesting stories, or even interesting ideas. Still waiting for someone to suggest a counter-example.
[edit] also, if you like short stories and novellas, I found the New Hugo Winners series (in which Asimov had taken a back seat as editor, writing in his introduction, to paraphrase, “I do not understand these kids”) has a way higher average quality of writing than the older Hugo Winners series. The ideas didn’t seem a lot worse to me, either. But I’ve also read a lot more of the regular Hugo Winner series so maybe I just got very lucky with the New Hugo volumes I’ve picked up.
Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Ursula LeGuin, Samuel Delaney, Harlan Ellison, Cordwainer Smith, R.F. Lafferty, C.J. Cherryh and well, hundreds of others.
I still disagree with his definitions but Ballard is definitely special.