[1] He was a proponent of science fiction being seen as "mankind's distant-early-warning system", as it is the only genre in which, facing the long-term problems of history, can be addressed the question of "What to do next?
[5] As an adult, he was working for the Refuse Collection Department of Camden Borough Council when he wrote the first chapter and an outline of a novel, which he sent to Hamilton-Stafford.
The latter included stories by well known science fiction names as John Brunner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Christopher Priest, and A.E.
In 1978, Hay edited a hoax copy of The Necronomicon, working with David Langford, occultist Robert Turner, and Colin Wilson.
[8] Langford was recruited because of his access to "heavyweight computer power at the Ministry of Defense",[4] which he used to supposedly "to extract the occult text from alchemical ciphers created by Dr Dee in 1583".
[9] Although the anthology was meant as "a joke" and "a literary game played with the deadpan earnestness of Sherlockologists", it grew into a cult book, especially in foreign editions.
Critics said that the convention was "a washout" due to giving "too much time to fringe events" (including Scientology - see below), as well as "a bar that shut early."
[12] Peter Nicholls later took over Foundation, pushing for "academic respectability" rather than Hay's hope, as David Langford put it, of a "pool of practical sf expertise, holding itself ready to be consulted by the Prime Minister in the event of an alien landing.
Christopher Priest described him thusly: Hay was an erratic, good-natured, idiosyncratic, infuriating, barmy, lovable genius: his ideas and words tumbled out so quickly it was hard to keep up with him.
In the 1970s he seemed to be everywhere: giving interviews on commercial radio stations, trying to make scientists talk to writers, and vice versa, [...] trying to get film producers to make more science-fiction movies, and from time to time putting together anthologies of short stories which he intended would contribute to or perhaps elucidate his maze of wonky ideas and initiatives.
Hay claimed the hospital staff was about to treat him for dementia because he had talked to them about how "the government should set up a Ministry of Science Fiction.
[4] John Clute, writing in Interzone, declared that Hay's death, along with that of Judith Merril, was a "warning shot" signifying that science fiction was now "mostly history".