David Cronenberg's "Crash" (1996) attracted controversy when it was first screened in London, and remain banned in 1998 by at least one borough council. The film won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, only for some members of the jury to dis-associate themselves from it. And yet it is a controlled, formal film, unsensational; more analytic than titilating. It is an expose of modern pathologies. It has almost none of the violence and explicit sexual content of the J.G. Ballard novel from which it is adapted. So, what is the relationship between Cronenberg's film and Ballard's book? And further, what is the relationship between Ballard himself and the character "James Ballard" in Crash? In this book, which includes an interview with Ballard, Iain Sinclair explores the temporal loop which connects film and novel. If Cronenberg "adapted" Crash, he also absorbed it and made it into something new. Yet, the novel controls the film, or uses the film to disguise its subversive intent.