On SF Crowsnest, Gareth D Jones reviews Interzone 220:

“We return to Gareth L. Powell’s galaxy of random jumpers in ‘Memory Dust’, the story of an ageing pilot determined to risk one last trip into space to right a wrong he caused years earlier. The story is imbued with the kind of emotional charge that Powell always manages to build into his characters as they face situations mundane or extraordinary. A possibly sentient octopoid creature and the ruins of an ancient civilisation qualify this as being on the extraordinary side.”

Read the full review here.

I’ve always been a little irritated by the attitude that on-line magazines are somehow inherently inferior to printed publications. Granted, there’s a lot of crap out there, but there are also some web publications with high standards and rigorous editorial processes – and these publications are redefining what it means to be a “professional” Science Fiction writer. It’s not all about cents-per-word anymore, it’s about readership.

It’s no longer possible to earn a decent wage writing short stories for traditional magazines, as it was for writers like Philip K Dick. Those days are gone and it’s a sad fact that as our audience finds other things to spend their money and attention on, printed Science Fiction magazines are seeing a steady decline in subscriptions. Frankly, in the UK it’s a lot easier for curious readers to Google an online SF magazine than it is for them to find a printed copy of one at their local newsagent.

Personally, I desperately hope the printed SF magazine market continues to survive in some form, but at the same time I also realise that if the next generation of prospective readers aren’t coming to us, it’s up to us to reach out to them. Without them, the genre will grow old and die. We have to set our stall where young and old alike can see and engage with it and if that means giving some of our work away on-line, then so be it. You only have to look at Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon and iTunes to realise the Internet’s fundamentally changing the way we communicate, the way we shop and the way we share information and interact with one another. As Science Fiction writers, we should be at the forefront of that revolution and if the printed magazines want to survive, they’re going to have to do something to attract that global audience.

As an example, I like the approach the publishers of ‘Interzone’ are using. They’re still publishing the print magazine but they’re also offering it for sale as an electronic download on ‘Fictionwise’, and releasing free podcast readings of the best stories on their website in order to get their content out to the widest possible audience in a convenient choice of formats.

(Reprinted from an interview with SF Crowsnest. Read the full thing here.)

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

Both SF Crowsnest and Strange Horizons have reviewed my book, The Last Reef. The latter review will be posted to the Strange Horizons website on Friday, while the former will be in the November issue of SF Crowsnest, which will also feature an interview with me. This interview comes hard on the heels of the two interviews I have recently given to Interzone and Concept Sci-Fi, but this one is a little longer and more in-depth than the previous two, and in it, I talk about: the future of printed SF magazines; using the web to attract new readers to the genre; and the necessity to unlearn everything you were taught at school in order to find your own voice as a writer.