Crash. Zadie Smith

      

      J. G. BALLARD

       Crash

       Copyright

      Fourth Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      77–85 Fulham Palace Road

      Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       4thestate.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1973

      Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1973, 1995

      Introduction copyright © Zadie Smith 2014

      ‘The Road to Crash’ © Travis Elborough 2008

      ‘Autopia’, first published in Drive magazine in 1971 and subsequently in The User’s Guide to the Millennium (1996) © J. G. Ballard 1971

      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.

      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.

      Source ISBN: 9780007287024

      Ebook Edition © 1973 ISBN: 9780007324309

      Version: 2014-07-03

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Author’s Note

Introduction by Zadie Smith

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       THE ROAD TO CRASH by Travis Elborough

       AUTOPIA by J. G. Ballard

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       Author’s Note

      THE MARRIAGE OF reason and nightmare that has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia.

      Increasingly, our concepts of past, present and future are being forced to revise themselves. Just as the past, in social and psychological terms, became a casualty of Hiroshima and the nuclear age, so in its turn the future is ceasing to exist, devoured by the all-voracious present. We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us. Options multiply around us, and we live in an almost infantile world where any demand, any possibility, whether for life-styles, travel, sexual roles and identities, can be satisfied instantly.

      In addition, I feel that the balance between fiction and reality has changed significantly