By JAMES REINL, US SENIOR REPORTER

Published: 08:45 EDT, 3 August 2025 | Updated: 10:41 EDT, 3 August 2025

An obscure 1970s sci-fi novel — packed with graphic depictions of teenage sex slaves, breeding clinics, and aristocratic rapists — is suddenly one of the most talked-about books on the internet.

Conspiracy theorists have drawn eerie parallels between its disturbing plot and Jeffrey Epstein's real-world sex trafficking ring.

The book in question, Space Relations: A Slightly Gothic Interplanetary Tale, published in 1973 by Donald Barr — a former headmaster of a New York City prep school and father of Trump-era Attorney General Bill Barr — has found itself at the heart of a tangled web of online controversy.

Fueling the speculation is the fact that Donald Barr, a former CIA officer, once served as headmaster at the prestigious Dalton School on the Upper East Side, where Jeffrey Epstein taught in the mid-1970s, despite lacking a college degree.

Though Donald Barr had stepped down by the time Epstein was hired, conspiracy theorists have seized on the timing, the lurid novel, and his son Bill Barr's role in Epstein's 2019 death in custody — as proof of a sinister connection.

'The Internet is abuzz with many bizarre theories,' reviewer Justin Tate posted on Goodreads about the 250-page book, which is now being sold online for as much as $4,000 a copy.

'Some read Space Relations like it's the Da Vinci Code, with hidden clues that might even reveal who killed Epstein. Others marvel over loose connections between Barr's plot and Epstein's crimes.'

What has most stunned readers is how eerily similar the fictional universe is to the real-life sex trafficking empire run by Epstein, who abused scores of underage girls in New York, Palm Beach and his now-infamous private island. Jeffrey Epstein landed a job in the 1970s at an elite Manhattan prep school despite lacking qualifications. The school's headteacher Donald Barr wrote a book about an aristocratic sex trafficking ring, decades before his son Bill Barr became Attorney General. The plot of Space Relations follows John Craig, an Earth diplomat captured and enslaved on a distant planet called Kossar, where the ruling aristocracy maintains a brutal regime of sexual domination and forced breeding. Craig ultimately becomes a servant to Lady Morgan Sidney, a sadistic elite described as having 'high breasts and long thighs', and is compelled to rape a teenage slave girl as part of an intergalactic breeding clinic. Critics have called the book 'cheesy', 'bad writing' and 'incredibly creepy' — but that hasn't stopped a cult following from forming among collectors, conspiracy theorists, and critics of America's ruling class, who say the novel reads more like a disturbing prophecy than fiction.

Just one year after Space Relations hit shelves, Donald Barr was headmaster at Dalton.

In 1974, Epstein, then a college dropout in his early 20s with no teaching qualifications, landed a job there teaching math and physics.

His brief stint at the school is widely seen as the springboard for his later social climbing — and grooming.

It's never been definitively confirmed that Donald Barr personally hired Epstein. But it's that foggy link — between the bizarre content of the novel, Epstein's inexplicable employment, and Bill Barr's involvement decades later — that has sent the internet into a frenzy.

Following Epstein's death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York in August 2019, then-Attorney General Bill Barr promised a full investigation, calling the circumstances a 'perfect storm of screw-ups' — including non-functioning security cameras and asleep guards.

He ultimately accepted the ruling of suicide, despite widespread doubts and calls for deeper scrutiny.

Recently, conservative YouTube host Tucker Carlson featured a segment exploring the connections, interviewing controversial history podcaster Darryl Cooper, who called the coincidences 'very strange and unacceptable'.

Cooper questioned Bill Barr's motives for dismissing Epstein's death as a 'suicide before they'd finished the investigation. Donald Barr, a CIA officer-turned teacher, dreamed up an intergalactic sex trafficking ring for his 1973 sci-fi novel Donald Barr, a CIA officer-turned teacher, dreamed up an intergalactic sex trafficking ring for his 1973 sci-fi novel  Donald Barr's son, Bill, came under fire for his handling of the Epstein suicide investigation when he was President Donald Trump's Attorney General in 2019Donald Barr and Epstein both worked at this elite Manhattan prep school in the 1970s. Epstein's brief stint at the school is widely seen as the springboard for his later social climbing ‘It could all be a coincidence, but the odds are against that,' said Cooper. The claims have been debunked by fact-checkers, including Snopes, which labeled the theories 'mostly false.' There is no proof Donald Barr, who died in 2004, played a role in Epstein's hiring, nor are there strong similarities between the fictional interplanetary sex ring in Space Relations and Epstein's real-life criminal enterprise. Still, for a novel that once gathered dust on the back shelves of second-hand bookstores, Space Relations has found a strange second life — not as science fiction, but as the focus of one of the strangest conspiracies of the post-Epstein era.

JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S UNDOING: A TIMELINE OF THE MILLIONAIRE PEDOPHILE'S DOWNFALL

1999 - Virginia Roberts Giuffre is allegedly recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to became Epstein's 'sex slave,' at 17. She also claimed that he forced her to have sex with his friend Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth.

2002 - Trump tells New York Magazine that his friend Epstein 'likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.'

2005 - A 14-year-old girl tells police that Epstein molested her at his Palm Beach mansion.

May 2006 - Epstein and two of his associates are charged with multiple counts of unlawful sex acts with a minor. State attorney of the time Barry Krischer, referred the case to a grand jury who heard from just two of the 12 girls law enforcement had gathered as potential witnesses. They returned just one single count of soliciting prostitution.

July 2006 - The case is referred to the FBI by the Florida Palm Beach police who were unhappy with how the case was handled.

2007 - Epstein's lawyers meet with Miami's top federal prosecutor Alexander Acosta, who would later become the Secretary of Labor in the Trump administration. They secretly negotiate the 'deal of a lifetime'. June 2008 - After pleading guilty to two prostitution charges, the millionaire was sentenced to 18 months in a low-security prison in exchange for prosecutors ending their investigation into his sex acts with minors and give him immunity from future prosecution related to those charges. In reality, Epstein was able to work from his office six days a week while supposedly incarcerated at the jail.

July 2008 - Accusers learned of the deal for the first time.

July 2009 - Epstein is released from jail five months early.

July 2018 - The Miami Herald publishes investigative journalist Julie K. Brown's exposé on Epstein's long history of alleged sexual abuse and news of the 'deal of a lifetime' after Acosta was made Labor Secretary.

February 2019 - The justice department opens an internal review into Epstein's plea deal.

July 7, 2019 - Epstein is arrested after his private jet lands at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport from Paris. At the same time, federal agents break into his Manhattan townhouse where they uncovered hundreds of photographs of naked minors.

July 8, 2019 - Epstein is charged with sex trafficking charges which detail how he created a network of underage girls in Florida and New York, paying girls as young as 14 to provide 'massages and sex acts.' The charges carry a sentence of up to 45 years in prison.

July 11, 2019 - More than a dozen women, not previously known to law enforcement, came forward to accuse him of sex abuse.

July 24 - Epstein was found unconscious in his cell after an apparent suicide attempt. He was moved to suicide watch at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

August 9, 2019 - More than 2,000 documents are unsealed which reveal the lurid allegations against Epstein in detail.

August 10, 2019 - Epstein is found dead in his cell.