Carolyn Lau is Lecturer of English Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She teaches and researches in the areas of global speculative fiction, contemporary literature, graphic narratives, and future storytelling.

Acknowledgments

List of abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Valuable Education

Chapter 2. Elementary Geometry

Chapter 3. Autopia

Chapter 4. The Denial of Death

Chapter 5. Neighbourhood Fascism

Chapter 6. A Collective Enterprise

Conclusion

Index

In dialogue with posthuman thought, this book argues that Ballard's fiction affirms the expansive powers of the human body to create openings in the limited present. This book also positions the transgressive private mythologies of Ballard's characters as strategies of survival and endurance in surrealist everyday catastrophes.