Kingdom Come. Deborah Levy
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J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2006
Copyright © J. G. Ballard 2006
The right of J. G. Ballard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
Introduction copyright © Deborah Levy 2014
Interview copyright © Sarah O’Reilly 2007
‘Remaking the World’ copyright © J. G. Ballard 2007
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Cover by Stanley Donwood, from a photographic copperplate etching.
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2006 ISBN: 9780007290109
Version: 2014-07-11
Contents
Cover Title Page Copyright Introduction by Deborah Levy Part I Chapter One: The St George’s Cross Chapter Two: The Homecoming Chapter Three: The Riot Chapter Four: The Resistance Movement Chapter Five: The Metro-Centre Chapter Six: Going Home Chapter Seven: Snakes And Ladders Chapter Eight: Accidents And Emergencies Chapter Nine: The Beach At The Holiday Inn Chapter Ten: Street People Chapter Eleven: A Hard Night Chapter Twelve: Neon Palaces Chapter Thirteen: Duncan Christie Chapter Fourteen: Towards A Willed Madness Chapter Fifteen: The Prisoner In The Tower Chapter Sixteen: The Bomb Attack Chapter Seventeen: The Geometry Of The Crowd Chapter Eighteen: A Failed Revolution Chapter Nineteen: The Need To Understand Chapter Twenty: The Racing Circuit Chapter Twenty One: A New Politics Part II Chapter Twenty Two: The Trenchcoat Hero Chapter Twenty Three: The Women’s Refuge Chapter Twenty Four: A Fascist State Chapter Twenty Five: Lonely, Lost, Angry Chapter Twenty Six: A Bullet In The Hand Chapter Twenty Seven: An Anxious Intermission Chapter Twenty Eight: The Old Man’s Quest Chapter Twenty Nine: The Stricken City Chapter Thirty: Assassination Chapter Thirty One: ‘Defend The Dome!’ Chapter Thirty Two: The Republic Of The Metro-Centre Part III Chapter Thirty Three: The Consumer Life Chapter Thirty Four: Work Makes You Free Chapter Thirty Five: Normality Chapter Thirty Six: Shrines And Altars Chapter Thirty Seven: Prayers And Wool-Wash Cycles Chapter Thirty Eight: Tell Him Chapter Thirty Nine: The Last Stand Chapter Forty: Exit Strategies Chapter Forty One: A Solar Cult PAPERING OVER THE CRACKS: J. G. Ballard talks to Sarah O’ Reilly REMAKING THE WORLD by J. G. Ballard About the author By the same author About the Publisher
Consumerism rules, but people are bored. They’re out on the edge, waiting for something big and strange to come along … They want to be frightened. They want to know fear. And maybe they want to go a little mad.
J. G. Ballard, Kingdom Come
J. G. BALLARD, our greatest literary futurist, changed the coordinates of reality in British fiction and took his faithful readers on a wild, intellectual ride. He never restored moral order to the proceedings in his fiction because he did not believe we really wanted it. Whatever it was that Ballard next imagined for us, however unfamiliar, we knew we were in safe hands because he understood ‘the need to construct a dramatically