“Extreme Possibilities”: Mapping “the sea of time and space” in J G Ballard’s Pacific fictions

One of the more enduring misconceptions surrounding the work of J G Ballard is that it operates in the classical dystopian narrative mode,1 sup-posedly mining pessimism, repression and the negativity of a post-industrial age. Robert Collins’s commentary is typical, placing Ballard’s Crash (1973) at number three in a list of “the top 10 dystopian novels”.