Writer Matt FW Curran gives my short story collection The Last Reef a great review on his blog Muskets and Monsters:

…there’s more imagination crammed into these pages than you’ll find in an average sci-fi novel from a mainstream publisher. And it’s not just his imagination either. Powell is a bloody good writer. His prose is lyrical and drips with vivid description, slipped into the text so it never feels like the rhythm of the writing is bogged down. It does mean that prose is economical but evokes more in one sentence of description than I’ve seen in a paragraph from more seasoned writers.

Read the full review here: http://macmillannewwriterpart2.blogspot.com

The following review appears on the MySpace blog of Morpheus Tales, the magazine of horror, science fiction and fantasy:

THE LAST REEF AND OTHER STORIES by Gareth L Powell

I liked this book, I really liked it. It’s not often that you come across a book by an author you have never heard of and you discover something amazing, but this is one of those rare books.

It sparkles.

Continue reading “Morpheus Tales review”

Gareth D Jones has written a good review of The Last Reef for SF Crowsnest, and he’s picked out a few of the stories for special mention:

The collection includes fifteen stories that range from present day accounts that barely touch on speculative themes to far-future epics that span the gamut of classic SF tropes but each time add something new. An example of the latter is ‘The Redoubt’. There was real emotional depth here as a young couple are offered the chance to send a digital copy of themselves on a universe-spanning voyage to the end of time. The scope of the concept and the agonising debate made it just fabulous.

While on a brutal punishment detail repairing a bridge, ‘Pod Dreams Of Tuckertown’ where he grew up. The background concerns mysterious aliens that have taken control of the Earth, but they are irrelevant to Pod and his dreams of escape and revenge. It’s a stark story that captures the raw emotions of the characters and the desperation of their situation.

‘A Necklace Of Ivy’ is a realistically rendered tale set against the backdrop of a mysterious alien plague sweeping through Cornwall. A young couple are making their way out of the county in advance of an army curfew, but make the mistake of stopping for one last break. The realistic dialogue and briefly sketched description make it a compelling little story.

‘Hot Rain’ is what could be described as a hard-boiled detective story, set in the exotic locale of Rio where a young girl has been cloned and kidnapped. It’s a fast-paced thriller with enough high-tech elements to make it stand out from the seemingly regular background.

My favourite of the collection is ‘Arches’, a story that initially appears to be a variation on ‘Stargate’, as purple arches appear across the world and people disappear through them to unknown destinations. The military do get involved, but random civilians also find themselves travelling to other planets for a variety of reasons. The scope of the story suddenly becomes apparent when the mechanism of travel is discovered and the whole concept suddenly becomes epic in scale. I found it truly captivating.

‘Flotsam’ is set against the same background as the title story ‘The Last Reef’, the reefs being artificially intelligent organic super-computers that are being quarantined and destroyed to protect humanity. As Europe sinks under the rising seas, two scientists formerly involved in this work meet up in what I found to be an intriguing location where hard decisions have to be made.

The issue also contains an interview with me that you can read here

Australian critic Blue Tyson reviews The Last Reef at Not Free SF Reader:

When expanding to the short story length GLP displays the same ability to deliver a taut tale with all the elements. You have cyberpunk, hardboiled action, and tales of weird alien incursions in the near future with people on the run in a lot of cases… Powell is definitely my sort of writer, it would seem

My favourite lines from the review were:

Now, fifteen of Powell’s stories have been brought together in The Last Reef, giving readers the opportunity for a sustained voyage through a surprisingly diverse range of imaginative and entrancing worlds.

And:

Without question, what all the stories definitely do have in common is a memorable quality - you’ll be thinking about them for a long time afterwards. These are stories that engage both the heart and the brain… Elastic Press has performed a public service in collecting them together.

Charles Packer reviews my short story collection on Sci-fi Online and gives it 10 out of 10:

The Last Reef and Other Stories is a new collection of science fiction short stories by Gareth L. Powell. It’s a worthy collection worth every pound of your hard earned dosh as the stories are universally well written.

One of the things that you first notice about Powell’s work is his apparent belief that it is women, rather than men, who act as the agent of change - a proposition that any resident of Troy would have agreed with. This is a refreshing idea from a male writer, who as a species have mostly put males at the centre of the action, and gives Powell’s work an individual voice.

Like the majority of good writers Powell presents a balance of ideas within each of his short stories. Some of the stories are interlinked, so the Monkey computer program which causes so much havoc in Ack-Ack Macaque is also referenced in A Neckless of Ivy, though in truth these mini tales of armageddon are really love notes to the women which appear in the stories.

Not everything is a love note to strong women as in The Long Walk Aft and Cat in a Box where Powell shows a playful and dark side to his humour. Both stories involve choices. The first is that age old problem of finding enough biological matter to restart your food replicator when all you have is a spaceship full of your sleeping shipmates. The second poses the problem of having a box which might grant immortality, though there is one catch, the box has a cat in it, if the cat’s dead then so are you, so would you open it?

One of the nice things about Powell’s writing is his ability to conjure whole worlds in a limited number of lines; his characters are not just ciphers there to push a clever idea forward. Having said that, the book isn’t short of these either. I was especially impressed with the idea of rogue computers which spin out of control, evolving past sentience used in The Reef and its companion stories Flotsam and Hot Rain. I feel there may be a novel in Powell yet.

As well as big ideas, comedy and world construction, Powell also does a nice turn at subtlety. This is especially evident in my two favourite stories in the collection Sunsets and Hamburgers and Distant Galaxies Colliding, though I think that Sunsets represents Powell at his best with a big idea - reconstructed humans at the death of the universe - played against both hope for the future and the depiction of a realistic relationship. The main pleasure with the story is that it treats its reader as intelligent. Powell paints just enough to get the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks, thus engaged, you are able to enter further into the experience than the role of voyeur would allow.

In total the book contains fifteen of his short stories and there is not a dud amongst them. Buy this book and do your brain a favour; you know it will love you for it.

10/10

Full review: http://www.sci-fi-online.com/2008_reviews/book/08-08-01_last-reef.htm

The first review of The Last Reef is now online at The Fix, and it’s positive. The reviewer, Rae Bryant, writes:

“In The Last Reef, Powell holds a cross-section of science, nature, and technology in his quintessential human hand and gives it a roll across the universal table. What turns up is an eclectic mix of possibility, tragedy, and hope—a gamble worth betting on.”

And:

“Powell’s depth and breadth of characterization work, and his settings are truly impressive. His work displays a willingness to show truths and flaws for what they are, rather than gratuitously exaggerating only strengths. With his instinct for subtlety, Powell is an author to watch. His work is the spyglass of science fiction, the ship just over the horizon.”

Read the full review here: http://thefix-online.com/reviews/the-last-reef/

My story SIX LIGHTS OFF GREEN SCAR has been reviewed in Danish by Lise Andreasen.

The Friday Flash Fiction Anthology, Illuminations, has been reviewed by The Fix, in an epic article by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro that manages to comment on every one of the sixty-six stories included in the book. And considering that the book was conceived, edited, designed and published in a ridiculously short period of time, I think it stands up pretty well. His comments on my nine contributions are quoted below, along with links to the online versions of the stories, for your reading pleasure:

William observes a “Snowball” from a dome on the surface of the Moon. The pacing in this very short flash piece is effective, the setting works, and, most importantly, the revelation of the last line is entirely consistent with what we know (and don’t know). This poignant, speculative outing is as fresh as snow.

Contemplating “The Point Furthest from the Sun” may lead one to inaction, even as a loved one is having a rough time. I missed the significance of the title, which, based on the skill of the writing, I’m sure was chosen with care. I found it intriguing. The repetition contained in the last two sentences certainly emphasizes the importance of what we’ve learned, but I’m not sure it heightened the experience for me.

The narrator of this tale learns of the horrors inflicted on some “Fresh Meat.” The attention to detail in this very compressed narrative, in conjunction with the sparse, polished sentences and strong rhythm, worked to make it a chilling experience.

A simple misunderstanding at an Amsterdam “Coffee House” informs this quiet, observational piece. It vividly captures a moment in the interaction between two characters and, through implication, portrays the characters and setting more vividly than might appear at first glance. Perfect coffee house reading.

Ed, on his way to take pictures of a crash site, stops at a roadside café and sparks up some conversation with the waitress, “Natalie.” There is an almost Ballardian sense of fragmentation and despair in this well-written tale, which artfully utilizes technological imagery to build tension in the setting and refract the character’s inner selves. An impressive feat given the space, this riveting piece transcends “flash” and approaches a less formalized version of the Ballardian “compressed novel,” in the best possible manner.

An unplanned hyperspace return to Earth provides Diego and Carla with a direct glimpse of cosmic “Lost Toys.” Powell again manages to imagine an intriguing situation and justify it with a rationale that is not only dramatically plausible but also thought-provoking. Some descriptive details, in particular, stand out. A tale to be found and enjoyed.

The revelation that ensues the narrator’s “Thai Curry” dinner with Nina is conveyed with elegance and emotion in this charged, biting, sad tale. With skill aplenty, Powell artfully builds not only a situation, but a mood, and places it in a broader context. More bittersweet than curry, but just as delectable.

In “The Red King’s Nursery,” Lawrence is vastly outnumbered and hopelessly outgunned by an enemy which, in the form of a talking remote, seems overly chatty and casual to be truly menacing. The whys and wherefores become revealed by the tale’s end. Though there were some clever moments and engaging writing, I didn’t find myself caring enough for the character to make this piece work on the psychological front, and I couldn’t ignore the weakness of the ending enough to make it work on a plot level either.

On his six-month watch aboard a starship forty years from its destination, with the remainder of the crew asleep in their pods, Kurt finds himself on “The Long Walk Aft” and the terrible fate to which it leads. The un-subtle situation is described in the no-frills manner in which its protagonist experiences it, and the detachment and realism only serve to strengthen the inevitability of its ending. It brought to mind Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations.” I enjoyed the image of a book being recycled for food; that seems somehow appropriate, under the circumstances.

On the whole, a pretty good review, I thought. You can read the whole thing here: http://thefix-online.com/reviews/illuminations/

In other related news, that cheeky scamp Shaun C Green has done a great impersonation of my flash fiction style over on his blog: http://www.nostalgiaforinfinity.com/?p=127

Matthew Tait has re-posted the review of Interzone 202 that originally appeared on the Horrorscope site back in June 2006. Of my contribution to that issue, he writes:

“Author Gareth Lyn Powell gives us The Last Reef, and manages, via a powerful torrent of invention, to imbue a myriad of ideas more in tune with a novel than a short story. In such a short space, we are treated to a potential future where simple communication nodes in an interplanetary radio network develop into sentience with awesome results. Humans, in their desire to transform, enter this matrix and are utterly altered from the creatures they once were. Some experience physical or mental deformities; others are elevated to a higher level of consciousness. People transformed by the Reef are highly sought after prizes as the Reefs themselves slowly morph into different realms or are terminated by the powers that be. Against this backdrop are three characters trying to reverse the reef’s destructive forces. Powell uses love as a motivation, with clever flashbacks throughout that dovetail inexorably toward the ending. Accompanied by a brilliant illustration, The Last Reef is a fabulous read indeed.”