Ballardian

UPDATE: Read our interview with JGB, in which he discusses Kingdom Come and more.

Someone sent me this link to an Amazon entry for Ballard.

There’s no synopsis, just this:

KINGDOM COME: JG Ballard

Not yet published: you may still order this title. We will dispatch it to you when we receive it from the publisher.

Edition: Hardcover

Product Details:
# Hardcover 304 pages (September 4, 2006)
# Publisher: Fourth Estate
# Language: English
# ISBN: 0007232462

On the JGB yahoo list, Ballard expert David Pringle reckons this:

“HarperCollins now own Fourth Estate, and they discontinued their ‘Flamingo’ imprint name last year — so it looks as though they may have shifted Ballard (and other leading writers, no doubt) over to the Fourth Estate imprint.

I did look through the list of forthcoming books for 2006 in The Guardian the other week, but it mentioned very little that’s appearing past July. No word of Ballard there. But this may be it! The first public mention…

_Kingdom Come_ doesn’t sound like a terribly original title (haven’t there been novels of that name before?), but it’s certainly an intriguing one. With luck, it’ll be out before a large segment of the world _does_ get blown to kingdom come, i.e. when nuclear war breaks out between Iran and Israel… with China and the US getting sucked in on the opposing sides…

Maybe the title of JGB’s novel will change, though. That may just be the working title (in the way that _Up!_ and _The High Life_ were his working titles for _High-Rise_).”

Update:
A new, fuller synopsis of JGB’s new novel, taken from Amazon.

“Kingdom Come — J.G. Ballard
Synopsis
This is a new masterpiece of fiction from J. G. Ballard which asks, could Consumerism turn into Fascism? Richard Pearson, a 42-year-old advertising executive is driving from central London to Brooklands, a town near the M25 on the western edge of the city. A few weeks earlier Richard’s father, a retired airline pilot, was fatally wounded during a shooting incident in the Metro-Centre – a vast shopping mall and sports complex, in the centre of Brooklands – when a deranged mental patient opened fire on a crowd of shoppers. It soon becomes clear to Richard that there was more to the incident than meets the eye. He senses that people are covering up what really happened. His suspicions are confirmed when the local mental patient arrested by police is released. Pillars of the community, among them Dr Julia Goodwin a young doctor who treated his father after the shooting, testify that the patient was with them and could not have committed the crime. Richard resolves to track down the real killer. He realises that the Metro-Centre lies at the very heart of the mystery. Consumerism rules the lives of everyone in the motorway towns, but it is a form of consumerism that co-exists with an obsessive interest in sport and a perverted pride in English nationalism. Racist attacks on immigrant communities are widespread, and the sports meetings are virtually political rallies. Supporters clubs march through the streets, waving their flags and banners, waiting for a new leader to guide them to the promised land. The leader soon appears in an unexpected way. Richard, who has fallen in love with Julia Goodwin, learns the strange truth about his father’s death.

Product Details:
Hardcover 304 pages (September 4, 2006)
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Language: English
ISBN: 0007232462″