Adrian Barnes

Adrian Barnes (1963-2018) was a British-born author who moved to Canada in childhood and worked as a teacher and journalist. His first novel, Satan a la Mode, was an absurdist fantasy, but he is best known for Nod (2012), his sole entry in the science fiction genre, narrated through the manuscript of a man immune to a near-future sleeping disorder that has ended civilization by turning the sleepless into insomniac, increasingly deranged figures doomed to die within weeks. Set in Vancouver and framed as a document meant to guide the few other survivors, mostly children, the novel was conceived as the opening installment of a planned trilogy that Barnes did not live to complete. His concise, at times unsettling prose earned Nod recognition as a notable contribution to pandemic-themed speculative fiction.