Christopher Priest was the author of 18 novels, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and World Fantasy Award winner The Prestige, which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Christopher Nolan. In 2017 he was the keynote speaker for the J. G. Ballard & The Sciences Conference at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.Nina Allan is a novelist and critic. Her work has previously won the British Science Fiction Award and the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire, and been shortlisted for the Hugo Award and the Prix Femina Etranger.

• PROLOGUE: ‘The White Hotel’Introduction: ‘The Paradises of the Sun’1. ‘Journey Towards the Rain Planet’2. ‘The Eve of Pearl Harbor’3. ‘A Landscape of Airfields’4. ‘A New Arrival’5. ‘The Man with the White Smile’6. ‘The Abandoned Aerodrome’7. ‘The Unlimited Dream Company’8. ‘Exit Strategies’9. ‘Out of the Night and into the Dream’10. ‘Danger in the Streets of the Sky’ELEVEN. ‘The Children’s Sanctuary’12. ‘The Naming of New Things’THIRTEEN. ‘Appointment with a Revolution’FOURTEEN. ‘The Sign of the Crab’15. ‘The Depot of Dreams’SIXTEEN. ‘Preparations for Departure’17. ‘A Season for Assassins’EIGHTEEN. ‘The House of Women’19. ‘The Burning Car’20. ‘The Causeways of the Sun’21. ‘A Decline in Property Values’22. ‘The Evening’s Entertainment’23. ‘Giving Himself to the Sun’24. ‘The Great American Desert’TWENTY-FIVE. ‘The Third Nile’26. ‘Through the Crash Barrier’27. ‘I Give Myself Away’TWENTY-EIGHT. ‘The Road to Shanghai’29. ‘The Predatory Birds’THIRTY. ‘Too Soon, Too Late’THIRTY-ONE. ‘The Upholstered Apocalypse’THIRTY-TWO. ‘Absolute Zero’THIRTY-THREE. ‘A Task Completed’THIRTY-FOUR. ‘The Illuminated Man’AcknowledgementsBibliographyChapter TitlesNotesPhoto permissionsIndex

A very timely book, and one that I hope will introduce new readers to a writer Priest rightly calls one of the greatest of the 20th century.