Barrington J. Bayley is important in science fiction because of his ability to reinvigorate and expand the genre as he explores exhilarating, often bleak metaphysical concepts about the universe and humanity's place in it. In a manner particularly relevant to the modern ethnic-strife-ravaged world--in which, Bayley wrote in "So What's New? My Thoughts on the Bomb" (1983), "Longterm peace is what is unnatural"--his science fiction reveals the dark side of human nature and the ways in which people may transcend it. Best known for his novels, Bayley has also published more than sixty stories (some as Alan Aumbry, John Diamond, or P. F. Woods) in science-fiction magazines such as British Space Fiction Magazine (1950s), New Worlds (1960s and 1970s), and Interzone (1980s and 1990s). Bayley's work reads like an original meld of H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Jorge Luis Borges, Jack Vance, and Philip K. Dick.

Barrington John...