Tomorrow afternoon, I will be reading my Interzone short story ‘Eleven Minutes’ as part of the ShortStoryVille event at the Arnolfini in Bristol. I’ll be on stage with five other local writers, so it should be an interesting event.

Here’s the blurb from the website:

5.00 – 6.00 Choice Cuts - The Bristol area pulsates with an abundance of brilliant short story writers. Sample some of the finest exponents’ stories, including Patricia Ferguson, Tania Hershman, Sarah Hilary, Amy Mason, Emma Newman and Gareth Powell. Compered by poet, publisher and performer Bertel Martin. This is a free, ticketed event and likely to be very popular so please book early.

I often get quite nervous before a public reading. From experience, I know I’ll be absolutely fine once I get up and start reading; but beforehand, if I look like a rabbit caught in headlights, you’ll know why.

Dina Santorelli recently interviewed me for her website. Here’s a snippet:

What is your book about? In a nutshell, the book is the story of four characters and the way their relationships play out over several centuries, and the way they pull together in the face of an ancient and unexpected threat.

What would you say is the most challenging part of writing a book? Writing the first line.

What motivates you to write? I don’t know. It’s just something I have to do. I don’t really have a choice. I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I’ve always had that urge, and I can’t imagine a life in which I didn’t feel the compulsion to put words on paper.

You can read the full interview here.

I have just received news that the culture section of Monday’s edition of The Irish Times will feature my article An Introduction to Steampunk.

In the meantime, the editor has kindly given me permission to repost the following article, which appeared in the newspaper on 23rd November 2010.

The Tightrope Act of Near-future Fiction
By Gareth L Powell

Asking what our world will be like just a few years from now, writers from William Gibson to Lauren Beukes draw their vitality from their knife-edge topicality. But no other type of literature has such a potentially short shelf life

Continue reading “The Tightrope Act of Near-future Fiction”

Gray Rinehart is a retired USAF officer; an author; and a contributing editor for Baen Books. On his website, he has just posted an interview he did with me a few days ago, where I talk about the process of writing The Recollection.

Here’s a snippet:

“I was surprised at just how much fun this book was to write. By the time I was halfway through, I was flying along. The characters and plot had come alive, and I couldn’t wait to dive in each day and spend some more time in their company. Most of the short fiction I’ve written has been set on Earth in the near-future, so it was great to be producing an epic widescreen space opera. As a kid, I always loved those sorts of books. I dug the hardware. So it was fantastic to have the chance to pour my love of the genre into a book of my own.”

You can read the whole interview here.

I talk to Dr Grasshopper about my new novel and my writing process over on the website How To Kill Your Imaginary Friends.

Here’s an excerpt:

“This seems to be a particular problem in fantasy and science fiction, where I have read many stories which open with several pages recounting the long and tedious history of some mythical kingdom or far-flung planet. This is the equivalent of opening a stage play by having a narrator recount the biography of the main character. It can be tedious and off-putting, and while the writer may think they are setting the scene, often all this exposition does is barrage the reader with a blizzard of (often barely pronounceable) names.

“If you want people to read what you write, you have to write about people. The world-building should always be secondary to the human story. If you concentrate on your characters and the interactions and relationships between them, the rest of the background will fall into place. “

Read the whole interview here.

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.

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.

Some books change the world. Read at the right time, they have the power to change our thinking, to inspire us, and to change our lives. When we put them down, we are no longer the same people we were when we picked them up.

The books listed below are the books that have had the greatest impact on my life and my development as a writer. I’m not claiming that they’re the best books ever written (that’s a topic for a different article); but each holds a special place in my heart, and each has contributed something to the way I now see my relationship with the world around me. If I hadn’t read them when I did, I wouldn’t be the same person I am today.

Some books change the world; and these are the books that changed mine.

Continue reading “Five Books That Changed My World”

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.