Ninety-Nine Novels: The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode writer and academic David Ian Paddy guides the Burgess Foundation's Will Carr through the strange world of The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard.

Published in 1979, the novel begins with a man named Blake crashing a plane into the River Thames outside of Ballard’s hometown, the suburb of Shepperton. He soon finds he cannot leave the suburb, and manifests a series of extraordinary powers. But is his elevation to a kind of messiah reality, or did he really die in the plane crash?

J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai, where his father worked for a textile company. After internment during the war, the Ballard family moved to Britain in 1945. He published his first book, The Wind from Nowhere in 1961. He went on to publish 18 more novels along with several volumes of short stories, essays and an autobiography. He died in 2009.

David Ian Paddy is the Albert Upton Endowed Chair in English Language and Literature at Whittier College in California. He specialises in twentieth century and contemporary British literature and has written extensively on writers such as J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Niall Griffiths, Jackie Kay and Jeff Noon. His book The Empires of J.G. Ballard: An Imaginitive Geography was published in 2015 by Gylphi Press.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By J.G. Ballard:

The Drowned World (1962)

The Terminal Beach (1964)

The Crystal World (1966)

The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

Crash (1973)

High Rise (1975)

Hello America (1981)

"The Intensive Care Unit" in Myths of the Near Future (1982)

Empire of the Sun (1984)

"Which Way to Inner Space?" in A User's Guide to the Millennium: Essays and Reviews (1996)

By others:

The Golden Bough by James George Frazer (1890)

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)

Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1942)

Pincher Martin by William Golding (1956)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (1967)

Ice by Anna Kavan (1967)

MF by Anthony Burgess (1971)

Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess (1974)

The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess (1982)

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1984)

Puma by Anthony Burgess (2019)

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LINKS

The Empires of J.G. Ballard: An Imaginitive Geography by David Ian Paddy at Gylphi Press

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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