Barrington J. Bayley

Who was Barrington J. Bayley?

Barrington J. Bayley was an English science fiction writer.

Bayley was born in Birmingham and educated in Newport, Shropshire. He worked a number of jobs before joining the Royal Air Force in 1955; his first published story, "Combat's End", had seen print the year before in Vargo Statten Magazine.

In the 1960s, Bayley became friends and a frequent collaborator with New Worlds editor Michael Moorcock, who described himself as "the dumb one in the partnership" and joined science fiction's New Wave movement. His short stories featured regularly in New Worlds magazine and then later in various New Worlds paperback anthologies, His first book, The Star Virus, was followed by more than a dozen other novels; his downbeat, gloomy approach to novel writing has been cited as influential on the likes of M. John Harrison, Brian Stableford, Bruce Sterling, Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds.

Bayley died of complications from bowel cancer on 14 October 2008. In 2001, he had written an outline for a sequel to Eye of Terror, provisionally titled An Age of Adventure. The novel was unreleased at the time of his death but rumours and listings of copies have circulated, including claims of a 2002 release date and a page count of 288. The book still makes appearances in lists of his works, including the bibliography in the ebooks of Bayley's works released by the Gollancz SF Gateway.