Gateway Essentials: Barrington J. Bayley

It being the case that Barrington J. Bayley passed away on this day in 2008, we thought that that we’d do our bit to keep his memory alive by  presenting his Gateway Essentials titles.

It may be an overstatement to refer to Bayley as one of British SF’s ‘forgotten authors’ but certainly he’s not as prominent in the cultural memory as some of his New Worlds contemporaries. And yet, this is the man Michael Moorcock calls ‘The most original writer of his generation’, and who is praised by two of the founders of cyberpunk as:

‘Fluent, singular and wonderfully funny’
William Gibson

‘Bayley writes science fiction with the natural fluency of a man who can’t help it. He has the ineffable, unfakeable genius of a true SF visionary’
Bruce Sterling

From the time-spanning space opera of The Fall of Chronopolis to the astonishingly inventive short stories collected in The Knights of the Limits, Barrington J. Bayley was one of British SF’s brightest and most original voices. We see it as our job to ensure that he doesn’t remain one of its most underestimated.

So, where shoudl you start? We’d recommend either of the titles above, or his 1974 opus,  The Soul of the Robot.

The Soul of the Robot (1974)	The Fall of Chronopolis (1974)	The Knights of the Limits (1978)

You can read more about Barrington J. Bayley in his entry at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and his books are available via his Author page on the SF Gateway website.