J. G. Ballard is well established as a remarkable fantasist, and 'The Unlimited Dream Company,' a rich, seductive and challenging work, confirms his mastery of a very particular idiom….

The emergence [in the novel of a] pagan paradise from the world of motorways and supermarkets (always potent settings for Ballard) is as much a play on wish-fulfilment as an allegory of salvation. The tropical landscape [the protagonist] Blake 'dreams up' enacts Freud's analogy between fantasy and 'nature reservations,' and the novel mysteriously but alluringly describes what might happen if archetypal dreams of eroticism and ambition were to 'come true' in the real world. There's too much decoding to do—every detail needs interpreting, and the hero's name is an irritant—but this nagging potential, common to allegory, is diverted by Ballard's almost Melvillean eloquence ('Already I saw us rising into the air, fathers, mothers, and their...