The Grand Wheel
Cheyne Scarne was a gambler... and he took the big plunge when he bet his life to get to the inner circle of the Grand Wheel. Because the Wheel was the ultimate Syndicate – the final Mafia – that controlled all that was illegal in all the planets under human control.
But Cheyne was not to know whether he had won or lost when he gained his point. Because the Wheel had plans for him. And they made him the historic offer he could not refuse.
There was, it seemed, a similar gambling combine in the rest of the galaxy, bigger by far than the little group of stars held by Earthlings. And the Wheel wanted a cut in this. So Cheyne Scarne found himself selected to be humanity's own player in a game in which nobody knew the value of the cards and the rules of the game were infinitely variable!
Science fiction with a difference! By the author of Collision Course and The Fall of Chronopolis.
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Barrington J. Bayley
Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008) was a British science fiction writer. He was born in Birmingham and educated in Shropshire. He died of complications from bowel cancer on October 14, 2008.
Bayley worked 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 Vargo Statten Magazine.
In the 1960s, Bayley's short stories featured regularly in New Worlds magazine and then later in various New Worlds paperback anthologies, becoming friends with New Worlds editor Michael Moorcock and joining science fiction's New Wave movement. His 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 likes of M. John Harrison, Brian Stableford and Bruce Sterling.
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