With Hello America (1981), Ballard takes his SF readers back to the slightly more familiar realm of ‘straight’ speculative fiction. The story takes place some time in the late twenty-first century and concerns a scientific expedition sent from Europe to the American continent, which was deserted by its inhabitants after the total collapse of its fossil-fuel-based economies a few decades earlier. Ballard proceeds to explore the nature of the American dream, namely ‘the proposition that everyone should be able to live out his further fantasies, wherever they might lead, explore every opportunity, however bizarre’ (HA 106). It becomes clear from the outset that the members of the expedition, who are all of American ancestry, have brought their personal baggage of hopes and ambitions to this country of intense possibility. The common denominator of their dreams and aspirations is a sense of absolute freedom and a conviction that they can make a new life and fulfil themselves by responding to the sheer energy of the empty land. Wayne Fleming, the protagonist, is an 18-year-old stowaway on the ship, whose father disappeared during an earlier expedition to the American continent. Although he was originally drawn to America because of his craving for romance and adventure, his ultimate ambition is to become President of the United States. Unlike Wayne, who is described as ‘a young redeemer with his planetary dreams of moving the seas and the winds’, Captain Steiner, a former Israeli naval officer, seems to think of America as a vast open area that constitutes ‘the ultimate backdrop to his fantasies of being alone’ (HA 84, 87). Whereas Dr Paul Ricci has left his native Italy for fear of being disgraced following a professional scandal over his university's Library Fund, Gregor Orlowski, the ‘political leader’ of the expedition, is a Soviet bureaucrat who was sent to America against his will but who nevertheless dreams of becoming a major colonial administrator of a revived New York City. Lastly, Professor Anne Summers, an attractive radiologist brought up in the American ghetto in Berlin, is driven by a need to escape from the enclosed and restricted life of her Spandau flat and ‘extend herself’ (HA 30) in a land she sees as a place of unlimited space and energy.