Peder is not just a tailor, but a sartorial—a lowly trade that has now been elevated to an incredibly high standard. Sartorials compete fiercely in creating new apparel, and Peder has heard that the greatest of them all are in the Caeanic worlds, where clothing is a way of life and a philosophy of living. In Peder's sector, though, Caeanic clothing is prohibited, and he has fallen in with a band of pirates attempting to salvage a Caeanic freighter. In splitting the loot—clothes—Peder cleverly spots a legendary suit, one of five in the entire galaxy, and walks off with it. And no sooner does he put it on than his personality changes; he becomes self-assured, clever, successful—it almost seems as though the suit of clothes is wearing him! A whimsical tale of a suit of clothes that really makes the man.
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.
