Please allow me to clear up a misunderstanding.

A couple of weeks ago, a letter appeared in The Guardian accusing their reviewer Eric Brown of bias, for reviewing too many books from genre publisher Solaris. The letter was signed by “Gareth Powell, Bristol”.

As several people in the SF field have already assumed that I wrote this letter, I’d like to make it clear that I did not. I have no beef with either Eric, who gave my own novel a decent enough review in April, or Solaris, who recently published the Shine anthology, which featured one of my stories.

I’ve already contacted both Eric and Solaris to set the record straight, and they have both been most understanding. I have also spoken to the Letters Editor at The Guardian. As the letter was signed “Gareth Powell”, without use of the middle initial, it seems unlikely it was a deliberate attempt to impersonate me, and so I’ll have to write it off as an unfortunate coincidence, and be grateful that it didn’t lead to greater misunderstandings.

The July issue of Acoustic Magazine contains an interview I did with Nils Lofgren, guitarist with Neil Young and long-serving member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

Acoustic Magazine is the UK’s number one monthly magazine for acoustic music, and I’ve been writing interviews and CD reviews for it since last June.

Last night, I dreamed an entire short story, from beginning to end. When one of my daughters woke me at 7am, I took my notebook to the kitchen overlooking the sea, and made as many notes as possible.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been thus inspired. Many of my short stories owe their genesis to ideas or images salvaged from dreams.

I’ve been away for a few days, recharging my batteries among the coves and havens of the Pembrokeshire peninsula. At this time of year, the hedgerows are unruly and colourful; the sea and sky are a sparkling blue; and the sunsets are livid orange smears, like embers on the horizon.

The break gave me the chance to step back from my current projects and gain a healthy perspective; and now I feel ready to attack them with renewed vigour.

In this week’s guest post, my fellow Shine author Aliette de Bodard takes a look at the science in science fiction.

Science in science fiction, or how realistic should and can we be?
By Aliette de Bodard

A large subset of science fiction concerns itself with extrapolating the future, and most particularly with imagining where science could take us [1]. A question that naturally follows is: how realistic should the science be in those stories/novels?

Continue reading “Guest Post: Aliette de Bodard On Scientific Plausibility”