STAR WINDS The sails were the product of the old technology, lost long ago in the depleted Earth, and they were priceless. For with those fantastic sheets of etheric material, ships could sail the sky and even brave the radiant tides between worlds and stars. The alchemists who had replaced the scientists still sought the ancient secrets... and Rachad, apprentice to such a would-be wizard, learned that the key to his quest lay in a book abandoned in a Martian colonial ruin long, long ago. But how to get to Mars ? There was one way left - take a sea vessel, caulk it airtight, steal new sails, and fly the star winds in the way of the ancient windjammers. Here is an intriguing, unusual and colorful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between the worlds.
Author
Barrington J. Bayley published work principally under his own name but also using the pseudonyms ofAlan Aumbry, Michael Barrington (with Michael Moorcock), John Diamond and P.F. Woods. Bayley was born in Birmingham and educated in Newport, Shropshire. He worked in 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 UK-only publication Vargo Statten Magazine. During the 1960s, Bayley's short stories featured regularly in New Worlds magazine and later in its successor, the paperback anthologies of the same name. He became friends with New Worlds editor Michael Moorcock, who largely instigated science fiction's New Wave movement. Bayley himself was part of the movement. Bayley's first book, 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 works of M. John Harrison, Brian Stableford and Bruce Sterling.
