It lets Blake-who is almost a superhuman entity-transform reality, by leaving the familiar and reassuring world of experience to join the exotic universe of dream and desire. Imagination is a creative and destructive force that is central in the novel. In the land of dehumanized urban spaces suddenly appear lush forests, where Blake, the protagonist, acts, crossing dream and reality, life and death, lucidity and hallucination.

Jim closed his eyes to calm his mind, but the sentry barked at him, suspecting that Jim was about to play some private game of which Sergeant Nagata would disapprove.Space, in The Unlimited Dream Company, is treated by a surrealist approach: modern-life’s empty and desolated places, the same that Ballard experimented in Shepperton-paradigm of nowhere-,are filled with a fabulous world. The war was about to end and yet the Japanese were obsessed with knowing exactly how many prisoners they held. The guards moved around the silent camp with their roster boards, carrying out repeated roll-calls. Dr Ransome and Dr Bowen had set off with Sergeant Nagata to the commandant's office, perhaps to be interrogated. For another hour Jim stood in line with the missionary widows, watched by the sentry. Already the flak tower appeared in a new light. Through the window was the pagoda at Lunghua Airfield. He rocked on his heels and listened to an old woman crying in the nearby ward. There would be sweet potatoes for Dr Ransome, whom Jim was determined to keep alive. Carefully eked out, the kit and equipment could be bartered with Basie for extra sweet potatoes for months to come, and even perhaps a warm coat for the winter.

Jim tried to decide which of the ruined buildings would best conceal his body. Soon enough, one of the Americans would be shot down into Lunghua Camp. He waited for the roll-call to end, reflecting on the likely booty attached to a dead American pilot. Jim stood to attention, pretending to be weak with hunger, and trying to avoid the suspicious stare of the Japanese sentry at the dispensary door. !' Mrs Philips, one of the missionary widows, caught him as he swayed forward, almost swooning before the image of this archangelic figure fallen among the paddies.

Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard