The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard
"The Unlimited Dream Company," a novel by J.G. Ballard, explores the story of a young misfit named Blake, whose life takes a surreal turn following a near-death experience in a plane crash. After reviving on a riverside lawn, he discovers he possesses extraordinary psychic abilities that allow him to transform the mundane English suburb of Shepperton. As he interacts with various townspeople, including a priest and a zoo owner, his powers become increasingly pronounced, enabling him to levitate and heal residents, as well as create lush tropical environments from seemingly ordinary settings. The narrative weaves together themes of life, death, and transformation, blurring the lines between reality and the fantastical. Blake's journey culminates in a deeper understanding of his newfound identity and powers, leading to profound changes for him and the townsfolk. The novel poses questions about existence, connection, and the possibility of transcendence, inviting readers to consider the boundaries of the human experience. Through its imaginative storytelling, "The Unlimited Dream Company" presents a compelling exploration of personal and collective transformation.
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The Unlimited Dream Company
First published: 1979
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—extrasensory powers
Time of work: Seven days in the late 1970’s
Locale: The London suburb of Shepperton
The Plot
In The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard tells how Blake, a twenty-five-year-old misfit whose first name is never given, suddenly acquires the strange extrasensory powers to transform the tranquil English suburb of Shepperton and release all of its inhabitants into the sun. Although the exact source of Blake’s expanding psychic capacities is never given, his transformation into a man whose powers defy the laws of gravity and biology is strongly connected to his near-death experience while trapped in the sinking airplane he stole and accidentally crashed into the Thames.
Reviving on a riverside lawn after his narrow escape from drowning, Blake is met by a group of townspeople who soon become important in his life: Father Wingate, the town’s priest; Stark, an amateur glider pilot and the owner of a small, decrepit zoo and amusement pier; and Dr. Miriam St. Cloud and her mother, who take in Blake after his attempts to leave Shepperton on foot and by boat fail mysteriously.
What creates the aura of otherworldliness, an inexplicable strangeness that has befallen the mundane world of Shepperton throughout the novel, is Ballard’s exquisite juxtaposition of the realistic (Dr. St. Cloud’s medical explanation of cerebral oxygen deprivation for the strange light that Blake has seen in the aftermath of his near death) and the extranatural (Blake’s new, accident-induced psychic powers). During his first night at the St. Clouds’, Blake becomes able to send his winged astral body into the air. It eventually crashes through the vestry of Father Wingate’s church. The next morning, a Sunday, the priest closes the church and shows Blake a physically damaged roof as evidence of his new powers.
With the arrival of the first tropical birds and the blossoming of strange jungle foliage that begins to transform Shepperton, Blake awakens to the full impact of his new powers. Not only is he able to heal townspeople with his blood, but wherever his mysteriously inexhaustible semen falls, new, lush tropical plants spring up from the soil. Isolated behind an impenetrable palisade of bamboo, and with huge birds interfering with any helicopter overflight, Shepperton becomes Blake’s domain.
Blake’s psychic powers allow him to levitate all the townspeople, absorb their bodies, particularly Miriam’s, and soar high above the town’s car park before releasing the people out of his body into the air, then landing them gently in the streets. The next day, Blake and Miriam are floating in the abandoned church when a jealous Stark shoots them. Miriam dies, but Blake cannot be killed, although he is immobilized. Paraded around town by Stark, Blake finally is abandoned, then dragged by children into a makeshift grave adorned by pieces of his crashed aircraft.
After a day in limbo, with plant and animal life dying around him, Blake recuperates. He gathers all the inhabitants of Shepperton, including a resistant Stark, and uses his powers to transform them into astral beings able to live in the sun. He learns that the accident has given him a new body; finding his old corpse in the sunken plane, he becomes one with it again. After lovingly resurrecting Miriam, Blake sends her on her voyage into the sun. Finally, he retires in a silt bed by the river, to sleep for aeons and become a fossil before Miriam will return for him.