Um, ewww. If you read books about the 1960's and various hippies' explorations of acid and other drugs, and then read this book, or if you think of the main character as a kid who has a psychotic break and is having delusions and hallucinations, this book makes a bit more sense. A young man steals an airplane, crashes it, nearly drowns, and when he regains consciousness he is nuts and sexually fixated to such an extent that if he is on acid or otherwise hallucinating he may have never even entered the plane and may simply be slumped on a bench somewhere, drooling. If somehow his story is not hallucination, but is in fact a sort of fantasy adventure, the kid is a pedophile, rapist, and still rather delusional. He thinks he is turned into a god, and that he has special powers that require sexually deviant acts and that justify his running around naked, spreading his semen everywhere. Yep, this is a bizarre book. It has elements of other Ballard novels, especially the idea that taboo or criminal acts can be necessary or even good, and a glorification of aggressive male sexuality that turns up in quite a few of this author's novels. I do not recommend this one for most readers I know. Folks who like the idea of this sort of sex-themed adventure might actually enjoy the novel [b:Three Cheers for Boner!|23496332|Three Cheers for Boner!|Amir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1415040308l/23496332._SY75_.jpg|43089887](actually a pretty good novel, and funny), but The Unlimited Dream Company has less taste and a less engaging story than Three Cheers for Boner!, by far. ( )

this reads like the fragmented. psychotic dream of a man who is going through a bizarre mental breakdown. Loaded with sick sexual imagery and an obsession with death.
Truly icky.

DNF 9/23/2023 ( )

Tras estrellarse un avión en el Támesis, a la altura de Shepperton, el joven piloto que logra salir a la superficie parece haber vuelto de entre los muertos. A las pocas horas, los buitres se posan en los tejados, una exuberante vegetación recubre las calles silenciosas, y los habitantes del lugar se desbocan, empujados por las visiones del joven superviviente, en celebraciones sexuales en honor de un clímax apocalíptico. En Compañía de sueños ilimitada Ballard despliega la extraordinaria imaginación que lo ha convertido en uno de los escritores británicos más aclamados de la segunda mitad del siglo XX.

Dying visions of a crashed aviator. Man wakes to find himself trapped in a town and learns how to manipulate his world, filling the town with birds and plants. His visions of grandeur turning himself into a Messiah, healing the sick and curing the blind and crippled, obsessed with his lust and desire to copulate with everyone he encounters. A disturbing story, full of typical Ballard-isms, the usual props he uses; aircraft, birds, plants, degeneration of a place, cut off from the reality of elsewhere, and flying to the sun. The story reminded me of The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, which I enjoyed a lot more than this Ballard story, although I still have a great admiration for Ballard's penmanship and ability to describe the dream state of his mind. ( )

Blake, a crazy bloke, obsessed with flying, steals a Cessna light aircraft from a maintenance hangar in London Airport. Because the plane is faulty and Blake doesn't know how to fly properly, would-be avaitor and aircraft crash into the Thames at Shepperton shortly afterwards.

After ten minutes, Blake is dragged from the river shore onto the grounds of a mansion. Once his confusion clears, he tries to escape Shepperton and the police he can hear pursuing him but finds he cannot - something prevents him - and the police never arrive to arrest him. Discovering strange urges, some of them disturbing, some of them perverted, Blake lurches from one weird adventure to another, having visions that pre-figure miracles of transformation. Blake himself transforms to a bird, a whale and a stag; Shepperton is transformed by him into a tropical realm of birds flowers and other vegetation, where the townsfolk return to a state of innocence reminiscent of Adam and Eve in Eden.

Blake takes the townsfolk into himself, then out again, teaching them to fly in the process only to be shot by the one man who refuses to accept Blake's miracles or even his status as a living man. Blake almost dies but is restored to full health by the plants and animals around him donating their strength. Blake then takes the folk of Shepperton into the sky again, this time to become an incorporeal merged entity in the heavens, before himself falling back into a grave to finally die.

Or does he? Is Blake a Pagan Messiah, come to redeem the people of Shepperton through an almost-death, almost resurrection, and lead them to Heaven or is he in fact drowning in the cockpit of his stolen aircraft, his visions and miracles nothing more than the last sparks of activity in a dying brain?

I went with the latter idea until the last quarter of the book, only then to develop doubts, before, very near the end going back to my original position. I think it is ambiguous enough that the reader can choose which ever interpretation he or she prefers.

In many ways this book is typical Ballard; the protagonist is clearly nuts from the outset and does not comprehend his own motivations or actions, also from the outset. More or less surreal events occur - in this book, extremely surreal events! The book ends somewhat ambiguously. One thing that is strikingly different from most of his books, however, is that rather than having society or the planet or some microcosm of both deteriorating drastically into chaos and irrationality, Shepperton is turned into Paradise, the townsfolk into Innocents. A quote from Time Out's review, printed at the beginning of the book, suggests that The Unlimited Dream Company is Ballard's most optimistic work. I can't argue with that, based on what I've read by Ballard (which is a fair number but probably still not half his books).

Despite the brevity of the book, the middle section, dealing with the transformation of Shepperton is repetative both in incident and in imagery, detracting from the power of the surreal events. The book really needs to be even shorter! This is perhaps the more irritating for being the only thing preventing it being the perfect realisation of the ideas Ballard wants to express in it. ( )