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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 scientists still sough 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 colourful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between worlds.
The alchemists who had replaced scientists still sough 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 colourful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between worlds.
Kindle Edition
First published June 6, 1978
3 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Barrington J. Bayley
72 books41 followersBarrington 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 9, 2018
Probably one more star than it deserves, but rounded up for nostalgia. This is a book I remember finding (and taking home) frequently on the paperback spinners at the public library when I was young.
It's kind of gloriously ridiculous -- set a few thousand years in the future, and see, we were totally wrong!!!! It turns out that the alchemists were right: everything is comprised of the five elements -- earth, air, water, fire and ether -- and you can actually craft "sails" that catch etheric currents and can be used to make your ship sail through the air, or even out into space.
Of course, nobody on Earth has done this for generations -- we're too close to the Sun to weave the sailcloth properly, and nobody comes here any more, so such ships as remain stick entirely within the atmosphere, riding on increasingly tattered patchwork sails.
This is the sort of book (a DAW paperback original from the 1970s) where the entire book is maybe 60,000 words long, and the part where they laboriously convert an airship to be capable of venturing into space, and make the perilous voyage to Mars in search of a missing fragment of an alchemical text that will allow them to create the Philosopher's Stone, is just the first half of the story.
No, I didn't mention any characters by name. I'm pretty sure there were multiple characters in the book, but if so it's kind of irrelevant to the functioning of the story.
It's kind of gloriously ridiculous -- set a few thousand years in the future, and see, we were totally wrong!!!! It turns out that the alchemists were right: everything is comprised of the five elements -- earth, air, water, fire and ether -- and you can actually craft "sails" that catch etheric currents and can be used to make your ship sail through the air, or even out into space.
Of course, nobody on Earth has done this for generations -- we're too close to the Sun to weave the sailcloth properly, and nobody comes here any more, so such ships as remain stick entirely within the atmosphere, riding on increasingly tattered patchwork sails.
This is the sort of book (a DAW paperback original from the 1970s) where the entire book is maybe 60,000 words long, and the part where they laboriously convert an airship to be capable of venturing into space, and make the perilous voyage to Mars in search of a missing fragment of an alchemical text that will allow them to create the Philosopher's Stone, is just the first half of the story.
No, I didn't mention any characters by name. I'm pretty sure there were multiple characters in the book, but if so it's kind of irrelevant to the functioning of the story.
January 14, 2019
"Star Winds," like many of Bayley's longer works, doesn't hold up as well as the short fiction. (His short story collection, "The Knights of the Limits" should be required reading for anybody who's interested in the British New Wave.) But that doesn't mean there aren't wonderful ideas in this book. While much of the episodic plotting falls flat, the final section in which multiple characters converge in an impenetrable fortress is absolutely inspired as Bayley mashes Jack Vance, Mervyn Peake, and the Comte de Lautreamont into a decadent, pulp-inflected fever dream better suited to the pages of the Yellow Book than Amazing Stories.
December 5, 2025
I long thought that Barrington J. Bayley was a respectable literary science fiction author who just happened to have the bizarre fortune of being published in the cute little DAW livery; now, after reading both *The Fall of Chronopolis* and this book, I realize that Bayley was a writer of pure pulp. *Star Winds* is larger-than-life and absurd and a helluva lot of fun and is defiantly more solidly constructed than the vast majority of pulp science fiction. It's not perfect, and I see why many people have issue with it, but I think that if you're open to something fun and subtly skillful then this short novel could be worth your time...
*Star Winds* starts out in Olam, a merchant port on Earth a few thousand years in the future, with a young man named Richard Caban hanging out at the bar in search of adventure. But there isn't much for adventure on Earth; it's been out of the intergalactic conversation for long enough for its role as humanity's homeworld to have been forgotten, and the sails which ships use to sail the world and even beyond, the ether silk sails, are starting to dry up. These sails - conduits for endless adventures - can't be made on Earth since it's too close to the sun, so sky ships are becoming less common and it's starting to look like waterways will return to being the primary conduit of trade on Earth. This leaves one interesting place for Caban to find adventure: with a crusty old alchemist named Gebeth who's spent his whole life trying to turn metals into gold in vain. He tells Caban that his whole life has been for naught and that he's just discovered that the only thing that would make it worth it - an alchemy text with the needed secrets in it - is apparently in a temple on Mars. This is supposed to dissuade Caban, but he takes it as a rally to make it to Mars somehow, and he finds a captain who's willing to do it named Zhorga. What goes from joking around in a bar turns to reality thanks to Captain Zhorga's desires to find old stocks of ether silk on Mars, but a good chunk of his crew desert when he hears his plans, especially since their ship - the *Wandering Queen* - doesn't have enough ether silk to make it to space. He hires some rogues to plug the holes in his crew, takes Caban along, and sets off for space, stopping on the way to ...
That ship, manned by ...
I'm a fan of this book. I think it's got cool themes which fit well together and I think that their story is told through a fun plot; while being pure pulp, it's pretty solidly constructed and balanced. First of all, Bayley's storytelling is economical; there's not a wasted sentence in this book, and while the writing isn't as pretty or literary or clever as people like me might prefer, it's pretty smooth. In fact, the nautical aspects of the book didn't turn me off like they usually do. I know that the depictions of sailing here aren't exactly as grounded or thorough as, say, *Moby Dick*'s, but the way action of phrased in nautical fiction usually leaves me feeling a bit off-put, a bit "outside" of the action. I didn't feel any of that here. Bayley also does a good job of balancing that action with exposition; The first few chapters set things up very well through some live scenes and a master alchemist and this future without resorting to really dumbed down expository mechanics, and the way that Bayley logically sets up this future where Earth has lost its importance and ships sail the skies is pretty well done. It works as a world, if not as a scientific thought experiment. There are some bizarre things in this book which don't exactly check out, like all these wooden ships entering and exiting atmospheres without burning up, which did make me sigh a bit. I can overlook the elemental stuff (which we'll get to in a bit), but I have a hard time overlooking these lapses in mechanical logic with no attempt of hand-waving even made. I would've swallowed a lot of silly explanations, so... it's too bad Bayley couldn't come through here. Another complaint I have it that Bayley seems *too* economical at times; I would've loved to see this book with an extra fifty, seventy-five, even a hundred pages. Its plotting kept a pretty strong hand on the reigns and everything slotted into each other perfectly, but the ending was a bit rushed, and I think that the book would've seemed less choppy with a bit more breathing room...
Now, that's not me calling this book choppy; it's most contemporary readers here on Goodreads or on book blogs who read the whole of *Star Winds* calling it so. Like a lot of science fiction novels - some mildly obscure examples I've read recently include *Palace of Eternity* by Bob Shaw (also see *Medusa's Children*) and *Corrupting Dr. Nice* by John Kessel - the plot more or less completely changes halfway through. I think that I need a term to use in these kind of reviews because of how common it is - not paradigm shift, that's already taken, so what else? - and how offputting it is to a lot of people. I didn't really mind because I expect a work of pulp to go off in zany directions, but the way some characters like the Baron's niece (that I wanted to see explored a bit more) were completely forgotten was a tad frustrating. Leaving some things hanging did leave some to be desired, but I don't think that the juxtaposition between space sailing and espionage was as stark and as uncalled-for as a lot of contemporary readers do. I mean, you won't really see contemporary books making these drastically wide turns, but you also won't see many contemporary books with this much unique flavor; I can't say I've read a book like *Star Winds* before, and I've read something along the lines of five hundred science fiction books (including novels and short stories), and the particular zest mixed into this book is singular enough to earn my respect and appreciation for it.
Since the characters aren't *that* interesting (although they're perfectly fine for this kind of novel, from Caban the wannabe-adventurer to the ray-like alien to created a marvel of architecture), and a tightly-written, fast-paced plot doesn't necessarily make for seasoning, this particular flavoring his to come from the book's core theme of the five elements, which includes ether, which enables ether-sailing. It's not often that SF writers try and take these fantastical concepts and do something new with them, but Bayley did, making sure to tie the elements to both sailing and . For how wildly this book shifts around, it all has to do with alchemy, even the . It's just unique and flavorful and worth more credit than it's given. Now, that doesn't invalidate how Bayley forgets characters or hastily wraps up the plot with this stuff because he got close to the end of the contract he needed to finish out (at least, that's how it feels, like it did in *The Fall of Chronopolis*, the only other Bayley I've read), but I do want to highlight the good about the book because everyone else focuses on the bad.
If this book was a bit girthier, I think it could've been a four-star read; I think the first chunk of the book was worth it. But since it went on a little long and got a little out-of-bounds, I'm only giving it 7.5/10. That's the same rating I gave *Fall of Chronopolis*, not-so-coincidentally. I do hope to read more Bayley soon because his work is very flavorful and I'm sure that he has a masterpiece just waiting for my eyes to grace it, but until we find that masterpiece, I'll have to keep on searching. Thanks for reading the whole review, and here's hoping I see you here next time I read a pulp novel from the 70s. Until then, safe sailing...
*Star Winds* starts out in Olam, a merchant port on Earth a few thousand years in the future, with a young man named Richard Caban hanging out at the bar in search of adventure. But there isn't much for adventure on Earth; it's been out of the intergalactic conversation for long enough for its role as humanity's homeworld to have been forgotten, and the sails which ships use to sail the world and even beyond, the ether silk sails, are starting to dry up. These sails - conduits for endless adventures - can't be made on Earth since it's too close to the sun, so sky ships are becoming less common and it's starting to look like waterways will return to being the primary conduit of trade on Earth. This leaves one interesting place for Caban to find adventure: with a crusty old alchemist named Gebeth who's spent his whole life trying to turn metals into gold in vain. He tells Caban that his whole life has been for naught and that he's just discovered that the only thing that would make it worth it - an alchemy text with the needed secrets in it - is apparently in a temple on Mars. This is supposed to dissuade Caban, but he takes it as a rally to make it to Mars somehow, and he finds a captain who's willing to do it named Zhorga. What goes from joking around in a bar turns to reality thanks to Captain Zhorga's desires to find old stocks of ether silk on Mars, but a good chunk of his crew desert when he hears his plans, especially since their ship - the *Wandering Queen* - doesn't have enough ether silk to make it to space. He hires some rogues to plug the holes in his crew, takes Caban along, and sets off for space, stopping on the way to ...
That ship, manned by ...
I'm a fan of this book. I think it's got cool themes which fit well together and I think that their story is told through a fun plot; while being pure pulp, it's pretty solidly constructed and balanced. First of all, Bayley's storytelling is economical; there's not a wasted sentence in this book, and while the writing isn't as pretty or literary or clever as people like me might prefer, it's pretty smooth. In fact, the nautical aspects of the book didn't turn me off like they usually do. I know that the depictions of sailing here aren't exactly as grounded or thorough as, say, *Moby Dick*'s, but the way action of phrased in nautical fiction usually leaves me feeling a bit off-put, a bit "outside" of the action. I didn't feel any of that here. Bayley also does a good job of balancing that action with exposition; The first few chapters set things up very well through some live scenes and a master alchemist and this future without resorting to really dumbed down expository mechanics, and the way that Bayley logically sets up this future where Earth has lost its importance and ships sail the skies is pretty well done. It works as a world, if not as a scientific thought experiment. There are some bizarre things in this book which don't exactly check out, like all these wooden ships entering and exiting atmospheres without burning up, which did make me sigh a bit. I can overlook the elemental stuff (which we'll get to in a bit), but I have a hard time overlooking these lapses in mechanical logic with no attempt of hand-waving even made. I would've swallowed a lot of silly explanations, so... it's too bad Bayley couldn't come through here. Another complaint I have it that Bayley seems *too* economical at times; I would've loved to see this book with an extra fifty, seventy-five, even a hundred pages. Its plotting kept a pretty strong hand on the reigns and everything slotted into each other perfectly, but the ending was a bit rushed, and I think that the book would've seemed less choppy with a bit more breathing room...
Now, that's not me calling this book choppy; it's most contemporary readers here on Goodreads or on book blogs who read the whole of *Star Winds* calling it so. Like a lot of science fiction novels - some mildly obscure examples I've read recently include *Palace of Eternity* by Bob Shaw (also see *Medusa's Children*) and *Corrupting Dr. Nice* by John Kessel - the plot more or less completely changes halfway through. I think that I need a term to use in these kind of reviews because of how common it is - not paradigm shift, that's already taken, so what else? - and how offputting it is to a lot of people. I didn't really mind because I expect a work of pulp to go off in zany directions, but the way some characters like the Baron's niece (that I wanted to see explored a bit more) were completely forgotten was a tad frustrating. Leaving some things hanging did leave some to be desired, but I don't think that the juxtaposition between space sailing and espionage was as stark and as uncalled-for as a lot of contemporary readers do. I mean, you won't really see contemporary books making these drastically wide turns, but you also won't see many contemporary books with this much unique flavor; I can't say I've read a book like *Star Winds* before, and I've read something along the lines of five hundred science fiction books (including novels and short stories), and the particular zest mixed into this book is singular enough to earn my respect and appreciation for it.
Since the characters aren't *that* interesting (although they're perfectly fine for this kind of novel, from Caban the wannabe-adventurer to the ray-like alien to created a marvel of architecture), and a tightly-written, fast-paced plot doesn't necessarily make for seasoning, this particular flavoring his to come from the book's core theme of the five elements, which includes ether, which enables ether-sailing. It's not often that SF writers try and take these fantastical concepts and do something new with them, but Bayley did, making sure to tie the elements to both sailing and . For how wildly this book shifts around, it all has to do with alchemy, even the . It's just unique and flavorful and worth more credit than it's given. Now, that doesn't invalidate how Bayley forgets characters or hastily wraps up the plot with this stuff because he got close to the end of the contract he needed to finish out (at least, that's how it feels, like it did in *The Fall of Chronopolis*, the only other Bayley I've read), but I do want to highlight the good about the book because everyone else focuses on the bad.
If this book was a bit girthier, I think it could've been a four-star read; I think the first chunk of the book was worth it. But since it went on a little long and got a little out-of-bounds, I'm only giving it 7.5/10. That's the same rating I gave *Fall of Chronopolis*, not-so-coincidentally. I do hope to read more Bayley soon because his work is very flavorful and I'm sure that he has a masterpiece just waiting for my eyes to grace it, but until we find that masterpiece, I'll have to keep on searching. Thanks for reading the whole review, and here's hoping I see you here next time I read a pulp novel from the 70s. Until then, safe sailing...
July 18, 2009
I thought it was really a cool idea and had a lot going for it. I didn't think the story was all that wonderful, though.
February 21, 2020
The story is a bit tedious with lots of sail boat jibber and alchemy jabber but it seems to be original. Or maybe not. It’s a swords and sorcery type story.
March 1, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"Future Earth uses special ethereal silk (from Mars) to power wood ocean going boats across the sky. The silk is running out and the ocean going boats with canvas are going to be the next big thing. OK.
AGAIN, the draw of the “future crumbling empire fixation” (FCEF) was so great that I picked up a copy of Bayley’s well, how should I phrase it — master(less)piece? A rather roguish boy raised in the taverns of future earth gets involved [...]"
"Future Earth uses special ethereal silk (from Mars) to power wood ocean going boats across the sky. The silk is running out and the ocean going boats with canvas are going to be the next big thing. OK.
AGAIN, the draw of the “future crumbling empire fixation” (FCEF) was so great that I picked up a copy of Bayley’s well, how should I phrase it — master(less)piece? A rather roguish boy raised in the taverns of future earth gets involved [...]"
August 10, 2023
The whole solar sail element of the story sure gets lost, eh? This felt like a really unfocused story. Poor characters who drop out for a while and shifting story priorities. The heavy emphasis on alchemy is just silly.
August 28, 2021
A pulp- like adventure. Lacks any real character development. Not to my taste.
January 12, 2022
not too bad, but i would've enjoyed it much more when i was 13
January 16, 2013
'Star Winds' is set a few thousand years in the future, where alchemy has become the predominant science and space travel is possible through ether sails which catch the star winds. Earth has become a backwater, and a lack of ether sails has cut off contact and made trade increasingly difficult. A crew set out to find new sails, but instead become involved in a galactic war and the search for the Philosopher's Stone, in a novel about escape, both physical and intellectual. Barrington Bayley is something of an acquired taste. He was part of the British new wave science fiction of the 60s and 70s, and was associated with New Worlds magazine along with Michael Moorcock and J G Ballard, though as Fantastic Fiction says, 'of the three, Bayley was perhaps the most inventive and the least successful'. His books are firmly in the pulp fiction tradition, adventurous and fizzing with ideas and plot twists, but sometimes lacking in characterisation and with the science secondary to the plot. His work has tended to be difficult to get hold of, being out of print or only published intermittently in odd editions. Gollancz are now bringing out his back catalogue as eBooks.
www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bayley_...
www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bayley_...
August 30, 2009
Well, the basic premise of the book is that alchemy is the basic science of the universe, and sail boats fly in the sky and to the other planets by using special sails that sail on the ether winds. It starts off fine, despite all that, with a 1600s feel, with our hero, a 2nd rate apprentice to an old alchemist, convincing an old air captain to make the first interplanetary flight to mars in generations. (our hero wants to fetch an alchemical text, the captain, wants to get more ether sail cloth which earth is desperately short on). This is surprisingly actually not that bad, and entertaining, and would have made a fine book, but this is B.J. Bayley here, and in quintessential B.J. Bayley style he jettisons the plot around page 80 and instead we get a galactic war between an inter stellar fuedal empire, and mind controlling giraffes.
October 18, 2013
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.
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2007...
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.
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2007...
February 9, 2011
This book.... made so little sense. There were like 2 parts to it, the first is on earth where there's no sailcloth to allow big galleon-things to sail through space, the second part is inexplicably a war between "advanced" humans and some other culture. Really, I think Barrington just wanted an excuse to research alchemy, and this was his way of getting paid for it.
February 28, 2008
Hey! For all I know, Barrington J. Bayley's really a very nice interesting guy who just writes these bks to make a living & might write some really brilliant stuff under a different name. SO, excuse me, Barrington, for using yr bks as an excuse for short shrift.
March 4, 2011
Grade D+
October 28, 2022
Great adventure! The Philosopher’s Stone is a key feature in this alchemical tale. Very interesting and a good read
February 2, 2022
Gloriously silly.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews