Super-Cannes, like so much of J G Ballard's fiction, is a study of a utopian settlement which, for all the cool perfection of its controlled environment, inevitably collapses into chaos. The setting is a business park called Eden-Olympia, based high up in the hills above the French Riviera. It is home to a group of classless, intelligent multinationals, locked away in their affluent seclusion behind high-security fences from the struggles of the locals patrolling the overheated streets below - the hookers and pimps, the North African drug pushers and the unemployed actors, the tourists and the nouveaux riches.
Recovering from an aviation accident, Paul Sinclair arrives in Cannes with his young wife, Jane, a doctor, who is quickly seduced by the hyperwork atmosphere of the settlement, leaving her husband to wither into aimlessness. The previous doctor, in whose apartment the couple live, one day embarked on a murderous rampage through Eden-Olympia, killing ten people before turning the gun on himself.
Sinclair is disturbed by the apparent motivelessness of this spree killing. In his quest to uncover the truth about the doctor, he becomes a kind of detective of the self: the more he discovers about Eden-Olympia, the more he discovers about his own potential for deviance and violence, and the more alienated he feels.
Reading Ballard is a peculiarly enriching experience. Every sentence is absolutely characteristic. His novels, at their best, resemble surrealist tableaux, representations of tortured interiority, and Super-Cannes is one of his best.
