Barrington J. Bayley

Barrington J. Bayley (9 April 1937 to 14 October 2008) was an English science fiction writer, born in Birmingham and educated in Newport, Shropshire. He worked as a reporter for the Wellington Journal and served in the Royal Air Force from 1955, and his first story, Combat's End, had appeared the year before in Vargo Statten Magazine. From the late 1950s he was a friend and frequent collaborator of Michael Moorcock, writing features, comics and stories chiefly for Fleetway Publications and later science fiction for New Worlds magazine. He, Moorcock and J. G. Ballard met regularly, and their discussions and theories led to the development of science fiction's New Wave. After his first book, The Star Virus, he wrote more than a dozen other novels, and his downbeat, gloomy themes have been cited as an influence on M. John Harrison, William S. Burroughs, Brian Stableford, Bruce Sterling, Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds. He used several pseudonyms and died in 2008; Moorcock manages his literary estate.