REVIEW: THE GRAND WHEEL

By Barrington J. Bayley.

Barington Bayley’s novels are about exploring ideas, in this case its high-stakes gambling. The stakes are high indeed for Scarne, a renegade mathematician working as an undercover agent to infiltrate the Grand Wheel. The Wheel is a consortium of gamblers, part Vegas, part Mafia. They are the alternative to the Legitimacy, the inter-stellar empire.

You’d thing the guys with blasters would have it all over the guys with cards, but the Legitimacy is engaged in a losing war with the Hadraonics. The complicating factor is they are fighting in a region where stars go super-nova without warning. Military commander Hakandra is relying on semi-mystic powers of a youth named Shane to understand when stars will explode.

 Both the Wheel and the Legitimacy seeks  to control the unpredictable, the Wheel the turn of cards in a game where the rules change from second to second, the Legitimacy the forces of nature and the course of war. Underneath the fast-paced space adventure is a meditation on powers that seek to control the uncontrollable and the manner in which they gamble with the lives of others.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE STAR VIRUS & THE MASK OF CHAOS

By Barrington  J. Bayley

An early classic from Bayley. Rodrone is an inter-stellar outlaw, not so much a Blackbeard of the spaceways as a ‘60s-style rebel-desperado. The galaxy is controlled by the Streall, a highly conservative alien race. But Rodrone has got his hands on something that threatens their hegemony. It’s a twisty little novel with a mcguffin at once compelling and impossible to pin down. The ultimate question is less about how to get power than asking what it means to have it.


By John Jakes

This Bayley novel was only ever published as part of an Ace Double with John Jakes’ Mask of Chaos. This too fits into the counter-culture motif of the era. Mike is a micropig, a cybernetically enhanced man, who faces prejudice and hostility because of his origins. He finds himself stranded on the planet Tome, a perfectly ordered world where people live behind masks, literally (an interesting touch, reminiscent of Moorcock’s Granbretania). Here he meets Ab, a down-at-the-heels drifter with a rebel-streak a mile wide. They find themselves recruited (rather unwillingly) for a science-fictional reality TV show even more vicious than Real Housewives of Atlanta.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS

By Barrington J. Bayley

Another of Barrington Bayley’s swinging philosophical space operas. This is no less than the decline and fall of an empire that rules not only space, but time. Unlike H. Beam Piper’s Paratime worlds, they don’t simply observe and exploit the past, the people of Chronopolis have gone beyond Fritz Leiber’s Spiders and Snakes, they are not content to infiltrate and alter the time stream. In true imperial fashion, Chronopolis just re-makes it, with vast temporal roadblocks keeping their bubble of time pristine and free of any influence save the empire’s. Time exists in nodes, wave peaks and troughs, always marching onward serenely, never interfering with one another.

But no wave can avoid ripples. Imperial princes may form misalliances between past and future selves. The borders are under attack. Within secretive cults seek to spread chaos and fear. Against the rising tide of temporal decay, a hero arises, Aton, a disgraced time-ship commander on a deadly mission to confront the demonic forces at the heart of time.

This is classic Bayley, part science fiction, part fantasy; sharp, to the point, with a headlong pace that has room to offer wild insights into science, philosophy, and human nature.

-Dave Hardy

 

THE GARMENTS OF CAEAN

By Barrington Bayley

Every time I read a Barrington Bayley novel I am more astounded. While serving up the most thrilling of Space Opera, Bayley never swerves from exploring the world of ideas with rigor and honesty.

In this case Bayley begins with the old saw that clothes make the man and develops it into an exploration of the role of external image in creating one’s internal identity.

A tailor named Peder Forbarth joins a group of gangsters in salvaging a wrecked spaceship. Part of the loot is a suit of Prossim, a special fabric that creates a unique psychic bond with its wearer. The question is open as to whether the man wears the suit of the suit the man. Forbarth’s new togs involve him in the galactic rivalry of Ziode—a culture indifferent to sartorial elegance—and Caean where fashion is the drug of choice.

Meanwhile a scientific expedition has discovered two rival cultures. Both live in the airless space between planets. A group of Soviets have encapsulated themselves in robot “bodies” while their Japanese rivals are deep-space yakuza pirates flying naked between the stars.

The novel takes a wild ride through the world of spies, conspirators, prison breaks, and galactic intrigue to get to the secret of Caean and Prossim. It’s a wild ride indeed.

-Dave Hardy

THE ROD OF LIGHT
By Barrington J. Bayley

The Rod of Light is Bayley’s sequel to his SF classic, Soul of the Robot. It picks up with Jasperodus, the robot who wanted to have consciousness, visiting the last Zoroastrian temple. There the priest expounds on the nature of the cosmic struggle between light and dark, spirit and matter. He makes it pretty clear that for followers of Ahura Mazda’s light, robots are from the dark.

The dialectic of dark and light permeates the action-filled story that follows. Jasperodus and other free robots are marked for destruction (can artificial minds die? are they even alive?) by the Bogor Empire. Meanwhile a group of super-intelligent robot scientists are developing their own technique for instilling robots with a true sense of self-awareness, a sentience beyond mechanical mimesis, a soul. Jasperodus is caught between his own desire for self-preservation, the Bogors’ hatred of robots, and his revulsion at the soulless methods of the robot scientists. Souls are granted freely to humans, but robots acquire them at a steep price.

Along the way there are interludes of truly bizarre wonders: an eternal soccer game, a recapitulation of Plato’s analogy of the cave played out in a coal mine, battles, airplane crashes, and startling revelations. Bayley’s dry humor and pointed observations on society are in abundance. As always Bayley’s work has something of the chameleon about it. Only a master can make lines like, “This vessel holds my soul. For technical reasons it cannot be united with my brain,” both funny and poignant.

Rod of Light is a refutation of all the pretentious goofs who think SF needs to avoid quality storytelling, wild scientific fantasy, and suspenseful thrills in order to be serious literature. Bayley achieves the high distinction of writing adventures thrilling to the soul and stimulating to the mind.

-Dave Hardy

THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT
By Barrington J. Bayley

Barrington Bayley is perhaps the truest science fiction writer I have ever come across. His stories are filled with all the swashbuckling action and adventure SF is supposed to have while taking the ideas raised by imagined science very seriously indeed. Bayely does this by blending history, philosophy, and classic fiction with a dash of mysticism.

In The Soul of the Robot we get the story of Pinocchio with Steerpike from Gormenghast in the starring role, a spicy blend indeed. The story begins with Jasperodus, a highly developed artificial intelligence coming into being. He departs his creator with nary a backward glance in search of adventure and himself in the wide world. Jasperodus is vexed by the question of consciousness, is he a sentient being or simply a clever imitation? But first he gets in the middle of a Wild West train robbery. His reactions to the violence he encounters leave one wondering, is Jasperodus fatally flawed by a lack of empathy or is he simply to young to understand the consequences of actions.

Jasperodus isn’t exactly a naif, after a period of slavery he rises to become a general and eventually a king through a series of Machiavellian intrigues. Is Jasperodus a true anti-hero or just a kid who wants his way, NOW. Bayley’s plot is a sardonic commentary on the nature of power, aimed less at those who wield it, than those who follow it.

Jasperodus’ tale takes surprising twists as the robot follows his quest, ever seeking to understand the nature of consciousness. Japserodus also follows some other, lesser quests to whip the bejeezus out of various personal foes. Bayley doesn’t mind stopping the action to have a debate on ontological metaphysics, usually framed by a duel to the death with a hostile space cruiser or a revolution. Bayley drops in deadpan humor as well, describing just how a robot deals with a comrade on a psychedelic trip, and why it’s unwise to make an enemy of an automated plumbing system.

The Soul of the Robot is taut, engaging SF that manages to thrill the senses while exercising the mind.

-Dave Hardy

STAR WINDS
By Barrington Bayley

So you’re an SF fan. You want all the crazy, swashbuckling action of Dan Dare and the Intergalactic Squid Invasion but the intellectual challenge of A Canticle for St. Squidbert. Oh yeah, and the outlandish fantasy of The Unicorn Chronicles Part XLIV. Whatcha gonna do, read The Economist? How about you try Barrington Bayley, the best-kept secret of SF.

Bayley writes thinking man’s Space Opera. Instead of dryly extrapolating quantum physics, Bayley boldly posits a futuristic world where the archaic art of alchemy rules and faster-than-light travel depends on the ether wind.

Star Winds begins on a decayed Earth where the technology to travel the “Star Winds”, the solar wind that blows through space, is being lost. Rachad, a young apprentice alchemist, makes an alliance with a washed up space-captain Zhorga. Together they will travel the old trade route to Mars before it’s too late to leave the Earth. It’s a desperate gamble to re-open Earth’s trade with the stars.

They find the space lanes strewn with forgotten weapons and strange dangers. Their destination is even more peculiar. Humanity exists in scattered feudal realms under attack from an invading alien race that absorbs people into their collective mind. Rachad is tasked with infiltrating a bizarre stronghold in order to wrest away its secret alchemy for the benefit of mankind.

Alchemy? Feudal kingdoms? Sailing ships? Is this an SF story or High Fantasy? I daresay Bayley realized that SF has its roots, not in the technical reports of engineers, but the fantastic dreams of a society where magic is found in the future. But his stories aren’t simply wish-fulfillment or power-fantasies. Bayley’s characters are well-rounded and his world is vivid with amazing wonders and terrible dangers. Bayley lets us stop every so often to wonder what its all about too. He’s not content to let the scurrying lives of merchant-adventurers, ambitious princes, and mercenary captains to be their own justification. He has the ability to show us the folly of our mad scramble to our demise. Like a good alchemist, Bayley knows that the thing to be transmuted is the metal of the soul.

-Dave Hardy

COLLISION COURSE
By Barrington Bayley

Imagine an Earth ruled by a Fascist regime whose primary goal is racial purity. Now it finds itself being invaded from the other side of the time-stream. That’s the premise of Barrington Bayley’s novel Collision Course.

Rond Heshke is an archaeologist summoned by the Bureau of Politics to investigate mysterious ancient ruins that seem to be getting less ancient. This is a crisis because the Titans, the totalitarian party that rules the world, is based on exclusive supremacy for the whitest of whites and genocide for all “devs”. Devs are defined as sub-species of mankind that “deviate” from the Nordic ideal of “True Man”. The ruins are associated with something worse than devs, aliens from the future.

Heshke is a somewhat reluctant defender of racial purity. He has connections with folks who traffic with devs. The survivors have been penned on reservations, but their existence is more than precarious.

Meanwhile the Titans have made contact with Retort City, one of Bayley’s deliciously imagined city-states. This one is a space station, or perhaps a time station, formed in the shape of two pods joined at the center. The people of Retort have solved the problems of class warfare by separating their folk into work and management classes in the two pods. To ensure that feelings of rivalry don’t develop alternate generations of families are split and sent to the opposite pod. The folk are sympathetic to the Titans’ problems. Unfortunately they are devs from the sub-class the Titans call Chinks.

Collision Course is satire of the blackest sort. The “ideal” societies built by Titans and Retort City dwellers are coming apart form their inherent contradictions. The politics of liberals come in for a thumping as well. The radical underground is composed more of talkers than actors, and though professing love for devs, they don’t actually want to have any around. In a grimly hilarious scene a True Man and his mixed-race lover bemoan the fate of the devs, except for a group called the Lorenes. Apparently they were such bastards they pretty much deserved genocide.

Collision Course is a gem of New Wave SF, one that engages with the social possibilities of futuristic technology without turning into turgid propaganda. It also has that most old-fashioned requirement of SF, a sense of wonder.

-Dave Hardy

THE ZEN GUN

By Barrington Bayley

Barrington Bayley’s SF is the kind of writing that would appeal to both a taste for old-fashioned action-oriented Space Opera and New Wave mind-trips that border on the surreal. The Zen Gun is a tale of galactic rebellion with Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader replaced by eccentric hippies and talking animals. They are living in a universe where there are lots of Forces, not all of them benign.

The galactic empire ruled by planet Diadem has grown decadent. Admiral Archier of the elite Ten-Fleet is a mere youth because of the declining birth-rate, children age fast because adults are scarce. The robots have been on strike for a few centuries, so genetically modified animals and human-animal hybrids have stepped in to fill the gap. The colonies are taxed of scientists and artists to help prop up imperial culture. Both the animals and the colonies have their own agendas, which makes for interesting times.

If that isn’t complex enough, a mentally defective hybrid called Pout has escaped from a secret lab and stolen an ancient weapon of mysterious, but immense power. He crosses paths with a futuristic samurai and Hesper, a shipwrecked rebel. And the universe is coming apart at the seams.

Bayley’s novels, the Zen Gun in particular are difficult to describe, thanks to the complex multi-sided struggles, the swiftly moving and varied crises, and the large cast of characters. What is wonderful to see is how colorfully the characters stand out, how deftly Bayley keeps his plot moving, and how vivid are the settings. Even more astonishing is that the whole thing runs about 160 pages. There is not an ounce of fat in the novel, nor does Bayley pull punches when it comes to looking at the underside of a decadent culture.

The Zen Gun is a mind-boggling little tour de force. If we could still get SF this well written in the 21^st century, the future of the genre would be assured.

-Dave Hardy

THE PILLARS OF ETERNITY
By Barrington J. Bayley

I was trolling about the internet one day when I should have been working and I came across the Cheap Truth summary of Barrington J. Bayley’s science fiction. I thought anything described as the “literary equivalent of psilocybin” by the “Zen master of space opera” can’t be all bad.

Actually it’s a lot better! Comparisons with William S. Burroughs aside, this is space opera of a high order. The Pillars of Eternity is grand, fast paced, full of high adventure, and high ideas. Try to imagine Seneca the Stoic starring in a cross between The Maltese Falcon and The DaVinci Code crafted by Doc Smith and you might get the idea.

The hero, Joachim Boaz, starts life as a crippled street-urchin. He encounters a sect of philosophers who rebuild him into a cybernetic superman. But when Boaz is crippled in an alchemy lab accident, he is rebuilt again as a symbiote with his spaceship, literally a cybernetic organism (κυβερνητης means shipmaster). He is also emotionally crippled. There’s a little matter of a lost planet with the galaxy’s most powerful treasure, government assassins who leave calling cards, a computerized version of the Kray twins, and a fad for getting killed as a kinky thrill. All that in 160 pages.

Pillars of Eternity is what they meant when they coined the phrase “new baroque space opera”. I just call it exciting, thought-provoking, and adventurous.

-Dave Hardy