Regular Interzone artist Vincent Chong has redesigned and relaunched his website and added some of his latest work. Please check it out: www.vincentchong-art.co.uk

This is an excerpt from my 9,000 word novelette “Arches”, which has been nominated for the long-list of this year’s Theodore Sturgeon award.

Excerpt from “Arches”
By Gareth L Powell

When he arrived, she was waiting in the yard in front of the house. She had a shotgun in one hand and a backpack in the other.

‘Nice car,’ she said, throwing the pack onto the back seat. There were wind chimes on the farmhouse gate. The night air smelled of cut grass, and the stars above were hard and sharp.

Continue reading “Friday Fiction”

So, I was chatting with someone and mentioned that I wrote science fiction, and they asked what kind of science fiction it was. Was it hard science fiction or soft? Was it cyberpunk or post cyberpunk? Was it Mundane or Space Opera?

The trouble was, I didn’t have a ready answer for them. I just did what I usually do in such situations – wave my hands around and mention “Bladerunner” a few times. But it got me thinking: on the one hand, these sub classifications are generally pretty meaningless to anyone outside the genre, but on the other, they can be useful descriptive shortcuts when talking to fans, agents or editors.

So, here’s my question: if you’ve read my book or some of my short stories, how would YOU describe them? Do they fall into a recognised category?

I’ve just received an email informing me that my short story “Arches” has been nominated for The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction of 2008.

Sam Tomaino reviews Interzone 220 on the SF Revu website:

“Last of all, there is “Memory Dust” by Gareth L. Powell. Caesar is taking a octopus-like creature back to its home planet. He is haunted by a dream of the planet and a black dust falling from the sky. He manages to get the creature back to its home and finds some answers to his questions. This one was pretty interesting.”

Read the full review here

On SF Crowsnest, Gareth D Jones reviews Interzone 220:

“We return to Gareth L. Powell’s galaxy of random jumpers in ‘Memory Dust’, the story of an ageing pilot determined to risk one last trip into space to right a wrong he caused years earlier. The story is imbued with the kind of emotional charge that Powell always manages to build into his characters as they face situations mundane or extraordinary. A possibly sentient octopoid creature and the ruins of an ancient civilisation qualify this as being on the extraordinary side.”

Read the full review here.