Revised and expanded edition. I think this novel speaks very eloquently for itself – to those who are ready to read between the lines. This book concerns dreams of flight, and the achievement of flight. Historically, dreams of flying appeared in the collective unconscious before the reality of flight existed in technology, and it seems plausible that if we understood our dreams better we would use our technology more wisely. Our machines manifest our dreams in matter crafted to coherence, and a psychoanalysis of our culture could easily derive from an examination of how we use science to materialise our fantasies and nightmares. - From the Introduction