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The Sinners of Erspia
The Sinners of Erspia are the inhabitants of a bizarre world, ruled and guided by the hands of Ormazd and Ahriman, twin gods of good and evil. Histrina, a child of Ormazd, is taken by the evil hordes to a world of terror where she meets Laedo, a man stranded far from his home.
Together they start on a hallucinatory journey to understand and to escape from the surreal world that holds them prisoner.
This is a novel about the susceptibility of the human mind and how it adapts to the extremes of terror and delight. A novel that could only have escaped from the astounding imagination of Barrington Bayley.
"Bayley is the zen master of modern science fiction." -- Bruce Sterling
"The most original SF writer of his generation." -- Michael Moorcock
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Barrington J. Bayley
72 books42 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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January 23, 2020
This book is a “travel story” in that the protagonist and his/her companions go from place to place and something more or less remarkable happens in each place. I compare it to Xenophon’s Anabasis which is the true history of 10,000 Greek soldiers (mercenaries) who marched to a battle in Iraq or Syria and then marched back. Or you can think of Gulliver’s Travels or Candide or The Hobbit or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. But the protagonist Laedo is not gifted a sword or a light sabre or a wand and he doesn’t meet up with a mentor or a Wizard.
There is a lot of sex and violence though. And there’s a nasty space alien who created all the worlds he visits. And there is a philosophical meditation on whether humans are evolved enough to be truly good and such. I mean, the space alien creates a planetoid puts two thought ray guns in orbit and humans are so easy to influence that they fight each other.
There is a lot of sex and violence though. And there’s a nasty space alien who created all the worlds he visits. And there is a philosophical meditation on whether humans are evolved enough to be truly good and such. I mean, the space alien creates a planetoid puts two thought ray guns in orbit and humans are so easy to influence that they fight each other.
Displaying 1 of 1 review