<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Barrington J. Bayley (April 9, 1937, Birmingham, England) is best known as an author of idea-driven science fiction. Charles Platt has described him as "like Larry Niven, with metaphysics instead of astrophysics." In the 1960s, he played a paradoxical role in the field, with his stories published in the avant-garde New Worlds, while his space-operatic novels came out from Ace Books and DAW Books. (The early career of Greg Egan is somewhat parallel, with New Worlds replaced by Interzone.)

Bayley's first three novels—Star Virus (1970), Annihilation Factor (1972), and Empire of Two Worlds (1982)—are minor works, perhaps most interesting for their introduction of themes that will come to fruition in later books, such as the gigantic world-eating "anomaly" drifting through space in Annihilation Factor. He hit his stride with Collision Course (1973, published in the UK as Collision with Chronos), one of several Bayley books based on the philosophical speculations of J. W. Dunne. In this book two universes, traveling in time in opposite directions, threaten to meet and annihilate one another. This theme was recomplicated in The Fall of Chronopolis (1974), in which two cultures battle by time manipulation.

Soul of the Robot (1976) deals with Jasperodus, a robot who considers himself more conscious than a machine has a right to be. (He returns in The Rod of Light (1985).) It was followed by sfnal explorations of smaller themes: The Garments of Caean (1976), about clothes that take over their wearers; The Grand Wheel (1977), a phildickian tale of gambling with aliens; and Star Winds (1978), an alchemical tale in which sailing ships ply the "solar winds" between planets. Perhaps Bayley's best work is The Pillars of Eternity, in which the complexities of Collision Course and The Fall of Chronopolis are extended to a timeless time and placeless place outside all the cycles of time.

Bayley's shorter works, particularly those collected in The Knights of the Limits, show a similar inventiveness.

External Links

After years out of print, many of Bayley's books are available from Cosmos Books.

Astounding Worlds of Barrington Bayley is a website devoted to Bayley's writing.

Annihilation Factotum provides a brief bio.