Chris Bailey-Smith

About Chris

Chris Bailey-Smith is a speculative fiction author working across multiple subgenres — from the epic sweep of secondary-world fantasy to the dark, rain-slicked streets of urban fantasy, to the cold mathematics of hard science fiction. What connects them all is a fascination with the hidden: the magic sealed beneath the ordinary world, the futures encoded in the choices we make today, the power that exists just out of reach for those who need it most.

His debut novel, Prodigal Son — the opening chapter of The Elementals series — is currently in development. Set in a world where elemental magic has been locked behind centuries of aristocratic privilege, it follows Drandal Widdon, a commoner who shatters the system from within — and discovers he was never ordinary at all.

Alongside his long-form work, Chris writes short fiction in the fairy tale and dark urban fantasy traditions — stories that feel ancient even when they are new.

The Worlds

Across his novels and short fiction, Chris has built a body of work that spans radically different futures and histories — yet returns again and again to the same themes: systems of power that outlive their justification, the cost of keeping magic from those who need it, and what happens when someone refuses to stay in the place the world assigned them.

The Elementals is an epic fantasy series set in a world one thousand years removed from a catastrophic act of magical suppression — the Great Working — that bound the elemental gods and handed their power to a noble class. Prodigal Son is Book One.

Gaia Chained is a second epic fantasy series exploring a world where the earth itself is in bondage, and the price of its freedom may be more than its liberators are willing to pay.

The Bloodborne & Converted is a dark urban fantasy set in the world-beneath-the-world — the hidden cities, shadow courts, and ancient creatures that share our cities without our knowledge.

Gene Wars and Raising Tides are science fiction works set in near futures shaped by genetic conflict and rising seas — portraits of humanity at the edge of what it can survive.