J.G.Ballard
L'allegra compagnia del sogno

J.G. Ballard, in many novels, has narrated the perverse effects of consumerism, technology, and communication media on the mind and heart of people and the transformations in Western society because of these, predicting the loss of all psychological and spiritual faculties, with human beings reduced to infantile beings acting only on instinct (two examples, the masterpiece 'High-Rise' and the last novel 'Kingdom Come').

This 'The Joyful Company of Dreams' (previously titled 'Dream Inc.') is the story of Blake, a pilot of a plane that crashed into the Thames (the river that flows through London), in front of a small town near the capital, Shepperton (where Ballard lived all his life), attracting the curiosity of many people from that sleepy and self-similar locality (like many in the surroundings of London which he will talk about later in other novels).

Inexplicably, however, despite being seriously injured, he emerges from the plane—a doubling—and assisted by a doctor from the local clinic, who came to his aid, Myriam, with whom he will have a love affair, brings awakening and life to that community, until he is hunted by a zoo keeper he knew in the past.

At the end of the story, the entire community joins him in a flight with which people leave that place, but Blake is inexplicably killed.

An enjoyable story to read that shows the possibility of awakening the human spirit dulled by materialistic society, even if such awakening is once again stifled.