Pillars of Eternity By Barrington J. Bayley

Summary Pillars of Eternity

A novel about:

How clones make murder a new sexual experience...

How rebuilding one man's skeleton made him the most sensitive and powerful man in the galaxy...

How a deck of cards was devised that was really programmed to reveal the future...

How a lost planet became the mecca of every treasure-hunter in space...

How Joachim Boaz plotted to derail the entire universe! Pillars of Eternity

I was trolling about the internet one day when I should have been working and I came across the Cheap Truth summary of Barrington J. Bayley’s science fiction. I thought anything described as the “literary equivalent of psilocybin” by the “Zen master of space opera” can’t be all bad.

Actually it’s a lot better! Comparisons with William S. Burroughs aside, this is space opera of a high order. The Pillars of Eternity is grand, fast paced, full of high adventure, and high ideas. Try to imagine Seneca the Stoic starring in a cross between The Maltese Falcon and The DaVinci Code crafted by Doc Smith and you might get the idea.

http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2007... Pillars of Eternity Before even cracking it open, this book raises the question: was it written by the Barrington J. Bayley of the quirky and intriguing The Fall of Chronopolis or the BJB of the lazy and slipshod Empire of Two Worlds? Fortunately, the former.

Bayley has an interestingly off-kilter viewpoint. He plays with philosophical systems of dubious merit, from the zenlike collinadors with their refined version of tarot reading to the actual practice of alchemy, described loosely as a system that parallels that of chemistry. This seems to be his recurring theme: presenting ancient spiritualism or superstition within a scientific or science-fictional context. Pillars of Eternity Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

Barrington J. Bayley, an English sci-fi writer and a member of the Science Fiction New Wave, is considered a lost great — if not for his novels as novels, but for his well of bizarre/extraordinary/and disturbing ideas. I recently reviewed one of his earlier works, Star Winds (1978) and was completely put off. However, a trip to the local book store yielded very few works [...]. Pillars of Eternity