I’m pleased to say that I’ve just returned the final copy-edited version of The Recollection to Jon Oliver at Solaris Books, ready for publication in September.

Newcon Press has announced its forthcoming anthology Future Conflicts edited by Ian Whates.

The book will be published in April and is a sequel of sorts to the anthology Conflicts which was launched in April last year.

Here’s the table of contents:

Introduction – Ian Whates

The Wake – Dan Abnett

Unaccounted – Lauren Beukes

The New Ships – Gareth L Powell

The Harvest – Kim Lakin-Smith

Brwydr Am Ryddid – Stephen Palmer

The War Artist – Tony Ballantyne

Occupation – Colin Harvey

The Soul of the Machine – Eric Brown

Extraordinary Rendition – Steve Longworth

Yakker Snak – Andy Remic

The Legend of Sharrock – Philip Palmer

The Ice Submarine – Adam Roberts

Welcome Home, Jannisary – Tim C Taylor

‘The New Ships’ is a direct sequel to my story ‘Fallout’, which appeared in the first book.

Nancy Fulda has posted an interview with me on her blog, where I talk about my forthcoming novel The Recollection, and how in the book I have tried to marry near-future and far-future science fiction.

“I’m a big fan of both space opera and near-future fiction; so when I started plotting this book, I wanted to find a way to include both. I wanted to write about spaceships and aliens and pack the book with all sorts of widescreen sensawunda eyeball kicks, and show how amazing all this stuff could be by contrasting it with a recognizable, contemporary character, grounding it all in his everyday experiences.”

Read the full interview here.

The 2011 Solaris Books catalogue is now available to download in pdf format.

The catalogue contains details of all the books Solaris will be publishing next year, including my novel The Recollection.

From the blurb:

“Gareth L. Powell’s epic new science-fiction novel reveals a story of galaxy-spanning scope by a writer of astounding vision.”

If you are a BSFA member, you probably already know that the BSFA Award nominations for 2010 are now open.

If you’re wondering who and what to vote for, I’d like to remind you that my novel Silversands is eligible for the Best Novel category, as it was published by Pendragon Press in April 2010.

I also have five pieces eligible for the Best Short Story category, including:

1. The Church of Accelerated Redemption by Gareth L. Powell and Aliette de Bodard, published in the Shine anthology from Solaris Books, April 2010.
2. Entropic Angel by Gareth L. Powell, published in the Dark Spires anthology from Wizard’s Tower, November 2010.
3. The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns by Gareth L. Powell, published in the 2020 Visions anthology from M-Brane Press, November 2010.
4. Fallout by Gareth L. Powell, published in the Conflicts anthology from NewCon Press, April 2010.
5. Gonzo Laptop by Gareth L. Powell, published in Hub Magazine, January 2010.

All nominations will be gratefully appreciated. If you are a BSFA member, you can make your nominations via the website here.

My novel The Recollection is now officially listed on the Solaris Books website, for release in September 2011.

Here’s the blurb:

In modern-day London, failed artist Ed Emery is secretly in love with his brother’s wife, Alice. When his brother disappears on a London Underground escalator, Ed and Alice have to put aside their personal feelings in order to find him. Their quest reveals to them terrifying glimpses of alien worlds and the far future.

Meanwhile, 400 years in the future, Katherine Abdulov must travel to a remote planet in order to regain the trust of her influential family. The only person standing in her way is her former lover, Victor Luciano, the ruthless employee of a rival trading firm. And in the unforgiving depths of space, an ancient evil stirs…

Gareth L. Powell’s epic new science-fiction novel reveals a story of galaxy-spanning scope by a writer of astounding vision.

Click here for link.

The 2020 Visions anthology is now available from M-Brane Press, edited by Rick Novy and featuring sixteen original stories of the near-future – including one of mine.

• Mary Robinette Kowal “Birthright”
• Sheila Finch “The Persistence of Butterflies”
• Randy Henderson “A Shelter for Living Things”
• Jason S. Ridler “Showing Light”
• Ernest Hogan “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs”
• David Lee Summers “The Revelation of Thought”
• Jeff Spock “Teh Afterl1fe”
• Emily Devenport “If the Sun’s at Five O’Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies”
• Cat Rambo “Therapy Buddha”
• Jack Mangan “Dead Rookies”
• David Boop “Organ Cloning While You Wait”
• Spencer Ellsworth “The Black Plague of Our Generation”
• Gareth L. Powell “The Bigger The Star, The Faster It Burns”
• Alethea Kontis “Pocket Full of Posey”
• Alex Wilson “Nervewrecking”
• David Gerrold “Time Capsule 2120: Actual Comments from Lunar Tourists”

You can buy 2020 Visions via Amazon.com. At the moment there’s no sign of it at Amazon.co.uk, but I’m sure it will be available there soon.

As well as stories by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Kim Lakin-Smith and Jennifer Williams, the new issue of Dark Fiction Magazine contains an audio file of me reading my short story What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done? This was recorded by Del in a side room at the recent BristolCon conference, hence the distant crowd noise.

For those of you who haven’t yet got a copy of Silversands, here’s a short snippet for Friday afternoon:

Avril Bradley’s hands were shaking as she unfastened the straps holding her to her bunk. The trip through the wormhole had been rough, like a rollercoaster ride through a furnace, and she could hear the ship’s heat shield creaking and groaning as it cooled. She slipped on a lightweight leather jacket and pulled her shoulder-length hair into a short ponytail. During the trip, her foil pack of cigarettes had fallen onto the deck. She picked them up and lit one, catching her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Her eyes were pale blue like an autumn sky and her features were sharp, as if etched by the quick strokes of an impatient sculptor.

Continue reading “Silversands Excerpt”

Colin Harvey, the editor of the forthcoming Dark Spires anthology, has been posting snippets of the stories it contains on his blog, including this excerpt from my story, ‘Entropic Angel’:

For four days it snowed. On the fifth day, the angel came. As light dawned, the Reverend Christina Pike saw it squatting like a gargoyle on the tallest of the village’s wind turbines, its shoulders hunched over and its radiant face raised to the sky.

An hour later, that turbine failed. A few minutes later, the  one next to it did likewise. Watching through binoculars from the window of the vicarage, she said: “It’s an angel all right.”

Around her, the hastily-convened members of the village council muttered to one another. They knew what lay in store. They’d seen the lights dim around the Estuary as each of the other towns fell in turn to the depredations of the angelic host. With their own eyes, they’d watched civilisation sputter like a dying candle.

They’d spoken to refugees and army deserters and knew things were bad all over, that without power they were doomed to freeze, and there was nothing that could be done to save them.

Pike lowered her binoculars.

“Maybe I could talk to it?” she suggested, but the council leader, a retired colonel, shook his head.

“Far too dangerous vicar, I won’t hear of it.”

And so Pike stayed by the window watching helplessly as, one by one over the course of the day, all the turbines on the wind farm slowed and screeched to a halt, until by sunset nothing moved, and stripped of their electricity the houses of the village fell into darkness and silence.

Dark Spires will be released this weekend from Wizard’s Tower Press.