I’m fascinated by science but when I write, I write about people. I write about characters reacting to the situations in which they find themselves. In an interesting article on his website, Jeremiah Tolbert pretty much sums up my own attitude to writing the science in science fiction:

(The thing) I take exception to is the notion that you need to be deeply conversant in anything.  I think you just need to do research to the point where what you have to say doesn’t break the suspension of disbelief and I think that’s a long ways from being a polymath. You don’t need to be an expert on anything but people.

Read the full article here: http://tinyurl.com/5k6448

See also my earlier article, Near Future SF *is* Possible

Some exciting news: an audio version of my collection The Last Reef will be available shortly, read by an actor called Philip Rose.

I just received the following email from Christopher Teague of Pendragon Press, confirming that my novel Silversands will now not be published in April next year, as previously planned.

2009 will see no planned publications from Pendragon Press… This decision hasn’t been easy, and is far from being a reflection on the current state of publishing, but more a reflection on my own level of energy and enthusiasm

Needless to say, I’m extremely disappointed by this turn of events, as I know a lot of people were looking forward to reading the book. I’m currently investigating alternate arrangements and will post updates as soon as I have any definite news.

The lastest issue of Vector dropped through my letterbox this morning, accompanied by an Elastic Press “sampler” - a booklet containing an interview with Andrew Hook, the head of Elastic Press, and three stories:

• Love in the Time of Connectivity by Daniel Marcus
• La Macchina by Chris Beckett
• A Necklace of Ivy by Gareth L Powell

You can also read A Necklace of Ivy for free on the Fictionwise site by clicking here.

Sometimes when writing fiction, it’s hard to keep a mental image of all the characters involved, and mistakes start to creep in. You get muddled and describe your hero as having blue eyes in chapter two and green ones in chapter six. To get around this problem, I suggest casting your story in the same way you’d cast a movie.

Continue reading “Do you have trouble remembering what your characters look like?”

Although I’ve spent most of this week dealing with the pressures of a new day job and a new commuting routine, I have managed to submit another 5,000 word story to Interzone and am currently in the middle of answering questions for an interview with Morpheus Tales…

Alert readers have spotted that many of my short stories appear to be set against a common background. To clarify matters, I have prepared this list, which groups together the linked stories in “chronological” order, according to the sequence of events they describe. 

Continue reading “Notes on future history”

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”

The November issue of Concept Sci-Fi is now available to download as a free pdf file. The issue includes my short story Flotsam, set in Amsterdam and the Mediterranean. Flotsam originally appeared in my short story collection, The Last Reef, and is a sequel of sorts to the book’s title story.

While on the Concept Sci-Fi site, you can also check out the interview I did for them a couple of months ago: http://www.conceptscifi.com/igpowell.htm

Sometimes the power of the subconscious amazes me. Last night for instance, I dreamed I was writing the plot outline for a 100,000 word SF noir murder/mystery novel set on Earth in the near future. The dream was so vivid that when I woke up this morning and wrote down as much of it as I could remember, I ended up with a workable 2,000 word outline. It’s a little rough around the edges at the moment but it’s definitely got potential.