Rivka Galchen - Rushing to Paradise

Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB 4thestate.co.uk

This edition published by Fourth Estate in 2014

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo in 1994

Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1994

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 © Rivka Galchen 2014

‘The Sage of Shepperton’ © Travis Elborough 2008

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 or are used fictitiously. 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 eBooks.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this e-book has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Cover by Stanley Donwood,

Assembled from a digitally manipulated linocut, iPhone photos and a photograph of atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, taken by Charles Levy © Corbis.

EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007384891

Version 2014-09-25

‘Mesmerising and poetic … compulsive reading’

Financial Times

‘A subversive version of Lord of the Flies … Ballard’s relentless intelligence and wildly irreverent, absurdist humour collaborate in creating comically satiric sequences. A body blow to the pretensions in our century’

Irish Times

‘ Rushing to Paradise , which marks a return to the ecocidal territory of his first novel, The Drowned World , and has much in common also with the atavistic violence of Hello America and High-Rise , is essentially a portrait of the imagination of disaster … His ear for the descriptive cadence is unerringly acute, and while his imitators can only struggle to render violence explosively literal, Ballard remains a profound elegist of decay’

Times Literary Supplement

‘A satisfyingly bizarre mixture of fantasy and fact … a dystopian vision of a paradise island overrun by a band of environmentalists’

Sunday Times

Title Page J. G. BALLARD Rushing to Paradise

Copyright Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB 4thestate.co.uk This edition published by Fourth Estate in 2014 First published in Great Britain by Flamingo in 1994 Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1994 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 © Rivka Galchen 2014 ‘The Sage of Shepperton’ © Travis Elborough 2008 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 or are used fictitiously. 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 eBooks. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this e-book has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Cover by Stanley Donwood, Assembled from a digitally manipulated linocut, iPhone photos and a photograph of atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, taken by Charles Levy © Corbis. EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007384891 Version 2014-09-25

From the Reviews of Rushing to Paradise

Introduction by Rivka Galchen

PART I

1: Saving the Albatross

2: Protesting Too Much

3: The Dugong

4: The Shore Raid

5: Island People

6: The View from a Camera-Tower

7: The Rainbow Pirates

8: The Gift Mountain

PART II

9: The Ecology of Paradise

10: The Attack on the Beach

11: The Breeding-Station

12: Fever in the Blood

13: Hunters and Lovers

PART III

14: A New Arrival

15: Volunteers

16: A Banquet of the Fathoms

17: The End of Love

18: A Gift to a Death

19: Lilies of the Sanctuary

20: The Secret Door

The Sage of Shepperton

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

‘On waking one morning, B was surprised to see that Shepperton was deserted,’ begins J. G. Ballard in one of the very last short stories he wrote, ‘The Secret Autobiography of J. G. B.’ B’s newspaper has not been delivered, the power is out, he goes next door to complain to his neighbour and finds no neighbour there, nor any traffic on the streets, nor anyone at the train station. ‘Thinking that perhaps some terrible calamity was imminent,’ he checks the transistor radio, and finds no signal coming from the UK, no signal from the entire continent.