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

New Scientist magazine asked six major SF writers for their thoughts on the future of science fiction, and received some interesting replies:

Continue reading “The future of science fiction”

The British Science Fiction Association seeks nominations from its members for its annual awards. As my short story collection was published in 2008, three of the stories in it are eligible for the Short Fiction category, as their appearance in the book marked their first time in print:

• Flotsam
• Hot Rain
• Arches

If you’re a member of the BSFA and you enjoyed the book, you might consider nominating one of the stories. If you haven’t read it yet, you can buy it as a printed copy on Amazon or as an ebook via Fictionwise.

(Those of you who enjoyed the book’s title story The Last Reef when it appeared in Interzone, may be interested to learn that Flotsam and Hot Rain are both sequels to that story.)

Writing on Bookslut, Paul Kincaid seeks to reassure the voices constantly heralding the “death” of science fiction:

The truth is, we tire of novelty more quickly than we tire of anything else. And because science fiction as a genre lives and dies by novelty, it suffers from this ennui more than any other form of fiction. So if, for whatever reason, science fiction is not challenging the way we understand the world, disrupting our sense of reality, or doing any of the other things we associate with novelty, then our automatic reaction is that the genre is dying. It is all or nothing… Science fiction has always been dying. That’s how it reinvents itself. 

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.)

I thought I’d try my hand at podcasting. This is my first attempt. It’s a bit rough (as I’m still learning how to use Audacity) but think of it as an experiment, and let me know what you think:

mid-life-crisis-by-glp

Recently, there have been a number of calls for more optimism in science fiction. Way back in January, Jetse de Vries laid down a challenge to the readers of Focus, the BSFA’s magazine for writers, to come up with stories that showed a convincing, progressive future -

Write an ambitious story about how the future changes for the better: one that is convincing, as well. As realistic and plausible as you can get it... Let it be grounded in the real, but a real that is more than just nihilistic, cynic, diffident, or disinterested. The progress can be incredibly hardfought, the progress can be met with all possible resistance, have setbacks, and all. But in the end, let there be some kind of progress.

Shortly afterwards, Jason Stoddard wrote:

Where we live is getting strange. But this doesn’t mean it’s a dystopia, or that we’ll be bowing to evil corporate overlords whose only mission statement is to rape the planet, or that we’ll have mind control installed against our will, or that we’ll all die because of climate change or slowing economic growth or whatever the cause du jour is. So why can’t we be strange–and happy?.

And:

…strange and happy does not mean looking forward to the boundless and perfect frontiers of a science-saturated future. It can easily encompass cynicism, hard realities, difficult sacrifices, ugly worlds, and many other hard, gritty scenarios… Because, even as we stumble forward along largely self-centered paths, there is the potential for greatness. And that makes me happy.

And today, over at the Guardian book blog, Damien G Walter also wants to move away from the gloominess that characterises much modern science fiction:

The challenge for writers of science fiction today is not to repeat the same dire warnings we have all already heard, or to replicate the naive visions of the genre’s golden age, but to create visions of the future people can believe in.

All of which makes me think of Ian M Bank’s “Culture” novels - gritty, visceral stories told against the backdrop of a vastly powerful utopia, where every citizen has the right to live exactly as he or she pleases, with no need of posessions or personal wealth.

I’ve written my own share of dystopias in the past - and will probably write a fair few in the future too. But this call for optimism has struck a chord with me, and I think it’s time we found a new balance in science fiction, between dystopias and utopias - a way to write involving, character-driven stories set against realistic, rigorously extrapolated futures that are as complex and varied as our present day - stories that show hope among the ruins, progress in the face of adversity.

After all, it’s all very well scaring people, but sometimes, you also have to inspire them.

I’ve just finished the first draft of a new short story called MEMORY DUST, which clocks in at 5300 words. It’s set against the same background as my earlier story SIX LIGHTS OFF GREEN SCAR and features the exploits of another “random jumper”.

Incidentally, if you’ve read SIX LIGHTS, you’ll know it ends on a cliffhanger. To find out what happens next, you’ll need to stay tuned for this week’s Friday Flash Fiction…

My sister drew my attention to this article in the Telegraph:

“Science fiction has always been interested in eternal questions about the nature of the universe, what constitutes reality, what it means to be human and so on. But genetic research, globalisation, environmental concerns, social breakdown are now pressing and familiar topics for everyone. If the literary world now thinks that JG Ballard is a mainstream writer and not a science fiction one, it is only because the rest of the world has caught up with the things against which he has been warning us for decades.”