Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

The Soul of the Robot

Jasperodus, a robot, sets out to prove he is the equal of any human being. His futuristic adventures as warrior, tyrant, renegade, and statesman eventually lead him back home to the two human beings who created him. He returns with a question: Does he have a soul?

The Knights of the Limits

The best short fiction of Barrington Bayley from his New Worlds period. Nine brilliant stories of infinite space and alien consciousness, suffused with a sense of wonder …

The Fall of Chronopolis

The mighty ships of the Third Time Fleet relentlessly patrolled the Chronotic Empire’s thousand-year frontier, blotting out an error of history here or there before swooping back to challenge other time-travelling civilisations far into the future. Captain Mond Aton had been proud to serve in such a fleet. But now, falsely convicted of cowardice and dereliction of duty, he had been given the cruellest of sentences: to be sent unprotected into time as a lone messenger between the cruising timeships. After such an inconceivable experience in the endless voids there was only one option left to him. To be allowed to die.

Barrington J. Bayley

SF GATEWAY OMNIBUS

THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT

THE KNIGHTS OF THE LIMITS

THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Introduction from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

The Soul of the Robot

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

The Knights of the Limits

Acknowledgments

The Exploration of Space

The Bees of Knowledge

Exit from City 5

Me and My Antronoscope

All the King’s Men

An Overload

Mutation Planet

The Problem of Morley’s Emission

The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor

The Fall of Chronopolis

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Website

Also by Barrington J. Bayley

About the Author

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction