Gareth L Powell is a speculative fiction writer from the UK. Critics have likened his work to Richard Morgan and Charles Stross. Recently, he has been published in America, Europe and the Middle East, and his work translated into Polish, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish and Portuguese. Earlier this year, his short story The Last Reef made the long lists for both the BSFA and BFS awards for Best Short Story, and placed highly in the 2006 Interzone Reader’s Poll.

Gareth keeps a blog at: http://garethlynpowell.blogspot.com, with links to online examples of his work.

Well Gareth, it seems like it’s been a very busy year for you since we last spoke. Could you tell us about the books you’ve signed deals for?

Since we last spoke, I’ve been fortunate enough to sign deals with two very cool independent presses, Elastic Press and Pendragon Press. Elastic Press are going to publish my debut short story collection, The Last Reef and Other Stories, in August 2008. This collects together many of the stories I’ve had published in print and online magazines over the last four years, including the two stories that have appeared in Interzone.

Then in 2009, Pendragon Press are going to publish my first novel, Silversands - a breathless cyberpunk yarn, shot through with planetary politics, espionage and subterfuge. I’ve also just released a collection of poetry, entitled: Los Muertos. This is my second poetry collection. It includes around forty poems, new and old, and can be ordered via my website.

I understand you’ve also been busy academically?

That’s right. Somehow I found time to take the Institute of Direct Marketing’s Certificate in Direct and Interactive Marketing, and pass with credit – an achievement I’m still very proud of.

Has that experience helped shape the way you write your fiction?

Writing copy for adverts and sales letters has taught me to make every word count, and to communicate complex propositions as simply and clearly as possible. In a nutshell, it’s helped me to strip my prose back to the essentials, leaving out all the extraneous waffle and communicating only the specific evocative details that bring the scene alive.

Judging from the short stories you’ve had in Interzone and elsewhere, I’d say there are some identifiable themes running through your work: themes like love, loss, redemption, and loyalty…

I believe that in order to work, stories have to be based on believable human feelings and frailties, so that you, as a reader, can experience them at a gut level, as well as a cerebral one - so that you’re willing the main characters to succeed, even if you know they’re doomed to fail.

This time last year, you’d just sold a second story to Interzone. Since then, I understand you’ve sold a few more stories to various other publications?

Over the last twelve months, I’ve had work appear in Interzone, InfinityPlus, BestSF, Focus, Fiction, Phantastes, and Efímero.

Even though a year is a short time in the big picture, we’ve all read numerous reports from people who see SF as a dying, or at least slowing down, genre. Do you think SF has changed in the last year, or is generally
changing?

SF has always been a genre defined by its own restless experimentation. But if you look on the shelves at your local bookshop or supermarket, you don’t see that. You have to go online to find the good stuff. You can buy
books on Amazon that would never grace a bookshop’s shelves – authentic, honest-to-goodness classics that high street retailers would never touch, because they’re focused on short term profit.

If their sales are slumping, it’s because they’re not giving us what we need and we’re going elsewhere to find it. There are some excellent writers working in the genre at the moment, through magazines and independent presses, and of course, the Internet - which allows them to network with each other, and to interact with readers in new and interesting ways. Over the last week, for example, I’ve received emails from readers in Australia and Venezuela who’ve read stories of mine online – readers I could never have reached by more traditional methods.

How has the subject matter of SF changed over the last few years?

I’m not sure it has, to be honest. The best SF has always been about what it means to be human in a strange and baffling world, and that’s still true today. If SF has grown dark and paranoid of late, that’s simply a reflection of the world it’s being written in.

You’ve started a Friday Flash Fiction blog meme, where you and other members write a short piece of fiction every Friday…

The idea started out as an exercise to keep my writing muscles toned up, by forcing me to produce 100-1000 words of fiction each and every week. It was just a bit of fun, really. I didn’t expect anyone else to take much
notice. But there are seven of us now, all posting these vignettes on our blogs every Friday - and there are undreds of other people out there reading them. Since we started Friday Flash Fiction, the traffic to my blog has quadrupled – and I know the other writers in the group can report similar surges in the number of visitors they’re attracting.

Who knows where it will lead? At the moment, there’s some genuinely interesting writing being produced in the group by some genuinely interesting people. Maybe one day when we’ve produced enough, we’ll collect it all up in an anthology, or something.

What have been your favourite reads over the last year?

I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections this year, by writers such as Alastair Reynolds, Harlan Ellison, Cory Doctrow and Rudy Rucker. I find them easier to dip into than full-length novels - especially as I have so little time in which to read. But having said that, I did find time on holiday to read M John Harrison’s Nova Swing and Glasshouse by Charles Stross.

Any particular favourite films you’ve watched?

I don’t go to the cinema much - I prefer to wait for the DVD release, and watch the films in the comfort of my own living room. Consequently, I’m always at least six months behind the rest of the world when it comes to new
movies.

What are your plans for next twelve months?

At the moment, I’m putting the finishing touches to The Last Reef and Other Stories. After that, I hope to start work on another novel, and some more short stories. Maybe even another short story collection. I have lots of ideas, I just need to start getting them down on paper.

Thanks for your time, Gareth, it was great to catch up.

See a previous interview (2006) with Gareth.

On and impluse, I did a search for old Interzone covers on google images, and came back with this site which holds most (if not all) the covers of Interzone from Issue 1 to Issue 199, which strangely enough is exactly where I started subscribing to it.

I particularly liked the way the cover changed slightly from Issue 1 to Issue 2, the total eclipse of the sun moving off centre and the colour changing. Very effective, if simplistic.

You can see how the artwork progressed, and the way in which ’sf’ is being portrayed through art is changing.

It’s also amusing to see how the Interzone logos change over the years, of which I prefer the newest. Although that’s not to say the older ones weren’t ‘cool’ in their day - they just look kind of dated now, which isn’t really true of the artwork itself, it’s stood the test of time.

My favourite is Issue 16 as it reflects the kind of stories I rate high on my list - a world which is similar to our own on the surface, but strange when examined closely.

Looking at the covers, quite a few names jump out. Most notably, J.G Ballard, Christopher Priest, Jonathan Carroll (which I never realised had written for Interzone), Ian Watson, Kim Newman, Greg Bear, Bruce Sterling,, Greg Egan, Eric Brown and William Gibson, to name but a few. Which goes to make an impressive lineup.

A great archive, which covers the covers of the world’s best, British and longest running, sf magazine, although, sadly, the names of the artists are missing.

Gareth Lyn Powell’s story The Last Reef has been longlisted for the British Fantasy Award. It was first published in Interzone 202 and complimented by illustrations by Vincent Chong.

You can read an interview with Gareth Lyn Powell here.

And read the story, The Last Reef on the Interzone site.

By Simon Hope

Forty-two.

It’s like a Freemason’s handshake to fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Forty-two. The answer to life, the universe and everything. Just one of a series of clever in-jokes that bind millions of Hitchhiker fans around the globe.

In 1979, soon after publication of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, author Douglas Adams was invited to a book signing at a small science fiction shop in Soho. As he drove he was held up by what he assumed to be a demonstration. It was only on arrival that he realised the massive crowds were there to meet him. Rarely has a book, particularly a sci-fi comedy novel, created a following of such scale. The Hitchhiker’s Guide had morphed from a cult radio series into a publishing success overnight. A phenomenon was born.

Life
Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge on 11 March 1952 (one of his favourite gags being that he preceded Crick and Watson’s own discovery of DNA in Cambridge by some nine months). After a strange start to life – Adams claimed to have made a habit of walking into lamp-posts as a child – he quickly found his vocation. By the age of eleven his first piece of writing had been accepted into print – a short story for Eagle annual. Despite the many detours he would take along the way, it appears the writing bug was unshakeable from that early age.

An essay on the revival of religious poetry earned him a scholarship to study English at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the chance to join the infamous Footlights comedy revue that he had heard so much about. Finding Footlights members to be “aloof and rather pleased with themselves”, Douglas, in his own inimitable style, formed a guerrilla revue group – Adams-Smith-Adams. They hired a theatre for a week and with them, Douglas scored his first considerable hit.

It was during his time at University that the first idea for the Hitchhiker series began to emerge. There was no moment of epiphany, no blinding light to signal the arrival of a publishing phenomenon. No, it was a much more agreeable turn of events. Whilst hitchhiking through Europe Douglas found himself lying on his back in a field outside Innsbruck, drunk, gazing at the stars and pondering that somebody should write a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. As ideas go it turned out to be a highly profitable one.

Post-Cambridge, Douglas threw himself into a writing career with mixed success. Not one to produce a thirty-second sketch when a thirty-minute version was available, Douglas found himself failing his first posting at The Weekending – a training ground for comedy writers. His uncompromising view of his work led to lean spells in his early professional career and he was reduced to living with his mother and taking jobs such as bodyguard to the ruling family of Qatar. It was around this time that Douglas began to suffer the first of recurring crises of confidence that would blight his later life. Despite subsequent global success and plenty of evidence to the contrary, Douglas suffered long periods of low confidence, believing that he just wasn’t capable of writing successfully.

Hitchhiker was effectively his last throw of the dice. Following nine months of solid work the Hitchhiker radio series aired in March 1978. The storyline involved a middle-class Englishman, Arthur Dent, escaping the planet Earth seconds before its destruction to make an intergalactic bypass. With his friend Ford Prefect – revealed to be an inhabitant of another planet – they travel through space with the aim of researching and updating the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Laced with humour, the timing was impeccable. Riding high on the back of the Star Wars-inspired science fiction revival, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a huge success. Having taken a producing job at the BBC to make ends meet Douglas suddenly found himself trying to simultaneously write the second radio series, the first novel, the television series and several episodes of Doctor Who. After only six months at the BBC, he quit. The world of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy became his full-time occupation.

The Universe
In September of 1979, some six months after the radio series had aired, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published as a novel. The response was instantaneous and immense. It appeared at number one in the Sunday Times best-seller list and didn’t bother moving.

It is difficult to discuss the work of Douglas Adams, however, without mentioning his legendary ability to not write. He took prevarication to a whole new galaxy, spawning the wonderful quote: “I love deadlines…I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

Unfortunately, his success only strengthened the ability to postpone writing. When faced with writing the second book, after passing numerous deadlines the publisher demanded a book within four weeks. Having failed to even start it, his then-girlfriend rented a house and locked him away to write the book. This became a common theme with every book from then on being written post-deadline in a state of panic, usually with Douglas locked away in secluded, rented accommodation.

The process of avoidance continued and worsened throughout his career. When deadlines loomed for the fourth book, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, Douglas took the initiative to book himself into a tiny Devon hotel in order to get away from life’s distractions. Of course, being Douglas he then spent all of his time at the hotel drinking wine with the proprietors and eating fried breakfasts. With a final publication date looming the publisher booked him into a Hyde Park hotel and typed whilst Douglas glowered and angrily dictated to him.

With the fourth Hitchhiker book out of his system and the memory of producing it fresh in his mind, Douglas took a break and began writing the Dirk Gently series – the tale of a holistic private detective – to familiar popular acclaim. Branching out into new areas Douglas developed a passion for environmental issues and in 1990 he travelled to Madagascar in search of rare lemurs. It was a complete revelation to him and he subsequently wrote Last Chance to See, ironically his least successful book, but the thing he was most proud of in his professional life. His interest in wildlife conservation would also drive him to walk to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in a prosthetic Rhino costume…to raise money for Save the Rhino International, of course.

Refreshed and having ignored several deadlines, Douglas wrote the fifth and final book in the Hitchhiker series, Mostly Harmless. The book was written in three weeks whilst under house arrest…some three years past its original deadline. It was, of course, published to critical acclaim.

The Hitchhiker universe had exploded to include five books, three radio series, a television series, several stage plays, a CD-Rom and a massively popular website that brings together fans from across the globe. The books alone had sold 14 million copies globally. But unfortunately, despite his persistence and dogged determination, Douglas just couldn’t get the movie project off the ground. It was a hit waiting to happen, but inexplicably it just couldn’t get started. There were several false starts and a few moments when a cinematic appearance looked inevitable, however ultimately it came to nothing.

And Everything
In 1999 Douglas moved his family out to California in order to work on the long delayed Hitchhiker movie that had continued to languish in development hell. In the same year he launched the H2G2 website where fans of the series could come together in a cyber community and post articles on any subject they wished. It was his dream realised – an actual guide to the galaxy where one could find reference to topics as diverse as “how to make a purse from Sellotape” to “20th century politics”.
On the morning of 11 May 2001, Douglas Adams was visiting his gym where, after laying down on a weights bench, he suffered a massive heart attack and died. He was 49-years old. Douglas left his daughter, 6-year old Polly, his wife, Jane, and millions of fans globally in shock and mourning. In a bizarre twist of fate the Minor Planet Centre Space Agency had coincidentally named an asteroid ArthurDent on the very day Douglas died.

Almost four years after his death the movie adaptation of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy finally made it to the big screen (via many directorial appointments and script changes). Fans everywhere agreed that Douglas would have been immensely proud of the end product. The journey was finally complete.

On 11 March 2007, Douglas Adams would have been 55-years old. Who knows what more he would have achieved. The movie? It was only a matter of time. More books? Perhaps, but not until a good few deadlines had passed by unnoticed.

So long Douglas and thanks for all the fish.

Thanks to Roy Gray and Peter Bond, Royal Astronomical Society Press Officer at Astronomy Now.

Astronomers will be congregating in their thousands in Central London over the 9-10 February as Kensington Town Hall plays host to European AstroFest 2007, the largest astronomy exhibition and conference of its kind in Europe.

This two-day event, held in Kensington Town Hall, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Hornton Street, London W8 7NX, is organised by ‘Astronomy Now’ magazine. Doors open at 9am and close at 6pm each day.

This year’s Astrofest will include a wide variety of speakers from all areas of astronomy, headlined this year by Sir Patrick Moore, Chris Lintott and Brian May, who will be discussing 50 years of ‘The Sky at Night’ and signing copies of their new book, ‘Bang! The Complete History of the Universe’.

Also present will be Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Programme, who will be speaking on both days about NASA’s plans for the exploration of the red planet. Prof. Jocelyn Bell-Burnell (discoverer of pulsars), astrophotographer Damian Peach, astronomy historian Prof. Allan Chapman, Dr Tim O’Brien from Jodrell Bank, Iain Gilmour from the Open University and Reinder Bouma of the Royal Dutch Association for Meteorology and Astronomy have also been added to the list of speakers.

As well as the conference programme, AstroFest 2007 also features the largest exhibition of telescope and astronomical equipment dealers in Europe, with over thirty companies and organisations exhibiting across three floors. Dealers and exhibitors will include Telescope House, David Hinds Ltd, Orion Optics, Springer-Verlag, ‘Astronomy Now’ magazine and the British Astronomical Association.

Also present will be a portable Starlab planetarium presented by AstroAdventures, who will give attendees guided tours of the night sky that are fun for adults and children alike.

Tickets are still available for the conference sessions all-day Friday and Saturday afternoon. A single conference session (incorporating four lectures) costs £12.50; two sessions cost £23.00, and three sessions costs £31.50. Entrance into the exhibition only is £5 for adults and £2 for children. Tickets bought for the conference include entrance into the exhibition. However, tickets for the Saturday morning slot when Sir Patrick Moore will be speaking have now sold out.

FULL PROGRAMME
The full two-day programme can be found at:
www.astronomynow.com/astrofest

Note that the link above lists the current Arts & Drama Audio listings which are updated almost constantly, so this will only be available for a short time.

Incidentally, there’s also listings for Doctor Who - Blood of the Daleks with Paul McGann as the Doctor.

Get it while it’s hot.

Wired have posted an interesting article on stories of six words or less. They asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves at something which Hemingway had done: (”For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) which he is dubbed as saying was his best work.

Other noterieties include Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Rudy Rucker, Charles Stross, Gregory Macguire, Margeret Atwood, Alan Moore, David Brin, Eileen Gunn and William Shatner.

My favourite is from Alan Moore: “Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time”

From Andy Porter and Roy Gray.

On recording from CapClave, Kim Stanley Robinson performs two readings. The first is from his novel, Fifty Degrees Below, and the second from the forthcoming sequel, Sixty Days and Counting.

This to be broadcast Saturday, November 4, between 5 and 7 AM on WBAI, 99.5 FM as part of Jim Freund’s radio program, Hour of the Wolf. The show is also streamed at http://stream.wbai.org/ and available ‘on-demand’ afterward. Go to http://www.hourwolf.com/toc.html a day or so after the broadcast, and I’ll have the link up by then.

Speaking of which, last week’s show was never aired, since our transmitter was kaput. However, guests Sarah Langan and JT Petty were troupers. We began recording the interview, only to discover trough listener calls that we were actually streaming online.

To hear this phantom show, click on this link: http://archive.wbai.org/pls.php?mp3fil=8717
After the intro, skip past the first 40 minutes, and you’ll come into the program midway, just as I turned on the mics. Most surreal, but an interesting discussion about
the nature of the horror genre(s).

To quote from the note I’ve just received from Lynn and Kit, his sons:
“Nelson was suffering for some severe heart valve problems that led to a series of complications before his death. He was loved and will be missed. Any and all arrangements will be reported later.”

We’ve lost another of the giants. May the earth rest lightly on him.

Bud Webster

Nelson Slade Bond stands as one of the significant writers of fantasy and science fiction of the 20th century. During the Golden Age of SciFi he wrote over 250 short stories for the colorful pulp magazines of the day. He later adapted many of his stories for radio and television, as well as producing many original scripts.

From Pete and The Interzone Board: J G Ballard was the subject on ITV’s The South Bank Show, being interviewed by Melyvn Bragg, last Sunday.

See http://www.itv.com/page.asp?partid=6468 for the introduction and http://www.itv.com/page.asp?partid=6479 for the podcast.

I haven’t got around to listening to it yet (being on a substandard, 20th century net connection which costs more than the amount of a medium budget Hollywood movie per minute) - but I will do sometime soon.

One aspect which made me laugh is, according to the introduction, they talk about Crash, Ballard’s most controversial novel, which inspired one publisher’s reader to write “This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish” - which Ballard took as a huge compliment! (I agree - it’s horrific how he treats the cars in this story).

According to the post on the Interzone Board: “Good show and JGB was cool with his SF roots, not sure Melvin was.”

(And this all ties in somewhat nicely with the fact I’ve just got my hands on The Interzone Anthology One signed by J G Ballard himself).

There is a Science Fiction Writer’s Course being run which is aimed at science fiction writers of all levels, which they hope will be of interest to anyone who has thought seriously about writing sci-fi.

Spread the Word is a charity funded by the Arts Council to provide support to writers in London to help develop their skills and give advice to help them get published. Most of their work is creative writing projects, courses, workshops and talks andthey use established writers as their tutors. They’ve been around for over 10 years, they’re non-profit making and all their courses are heavily subsidised.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

Science Fiction Writing Course

Boldly go where you have never gone before with this introductory course to writing Science Fiction. The course will explore the realms of science fiction writing. Author Anthony Joseph will inspire and challenge you to create, research, and write your own science fiction stories, and experiment with the genre.

This course runs twice, once in Peckham and then in Willesden Green.

Anthony Joseph is an author, poet, musician and lecturer. He is the author of two poetry collections: Desafinado, and Teragaton.
He is a touring writer with the British Council and performs and lectures internationally. His debut novel The African Origins of UFOs is published by Salt Publishing.

In partnership with Brent Arts and Southwark Libraries.

Saturdays 9, 16, 23 September
10.30am - 1.30pm
The Pod, Peckham Library
122 Peckham Hill Street
London SE15 5JR
[RAIL] Peckham Rye

Saturdays 21, 28 October; 4 November
1.30pm - 4.30pm
Willesden Green Library
95 High Road
Willesden Green
London NW10 2SF
[TUBE] Willesden Green

Number of places available on each course: 12

£42 / £21 concessions.

To book call 020 7735 3111 check out their site at spreadtheword.org.uk

Included on the list are authors such as Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, William Gibson, Liz Williams and Charles Stross.

It looks like it’s kept upto date and most of the sites mentioned are RSS enabled, so you should be able to keep track of their writings quite easily.

Picture a guy who has an urge to do something, but isn’t sure in what direction to go. Someone intervenes and casually, yet mysteriously nudges him in a certain direction.

Then picture him going to a foreign land, somewhere he’s unfamiliar with. But somehow he is directed in the direction of a certain destiny.

Interwine a higher intelligence of which people call gods - and you get Blue Nights.

Jerry does a real good job of describing the people and also the setting. I wish I could go on holiday there and do a bit of sight seeing, but alas, that isn’t possible.

I think people have likened his narrative to Erik Von Daniken who said that modern humans were ‘helped’ along by extra terrestrials. For me, that didn’t come across while I was reading it. It’s simply (but beautifully) an era in which we don’t live.

The characters drive the story - they interwine in a realistic way. It’s grounded somewhat in religion and it kind of shows you that different factions each have their own perspective - that thousands of years ago is pretty much the same as happens today.

It’s not really science fiction, veering to the fantasy side - a romantic story set in a far away place (in time) but it is wholey realistic. I laughed and I have to admit, I felt a tug of realness in the sad parts. The narrative rides easily, and therefore you concentrate on the people and surroundings, the story and you get enveloped.

I hope see a sequel to this book as, somehow, it seems incomplete (or rather - it seems to end too soon).

I’m looking forward to more of Jerry’s fantasy work.

Gareth Lyn Powell is one of the new generation of British SF writers currently making their mark in Interzone, the UK’s longest-running SF&F magazine. He lives in the West Country with his wife and two daughters. His fiction has been published in America, Europe and the Middle East, and has been translated into Portuguese, Hebrew, Greek and Polish. He made his first professional fiction sale to Interzone in 2005.

His novella The Last Reef appeared in Interzone #202, and a short story - with the intriguing title Ack-Ack Macaque - will appear in a forthcoming issue.

In 2006, Gareth won the Firebrand Great Fiction Award from SFReader.com for his short story Sunsets and Hamburgers.

He keeps a blog a http://garethlynpowell.blogspot.com: , where you can find links to online stories and reviews.

How long would you say you’ve been writing?

GLP: I’ve been writing stories my whole life, in notebooks and on scraps of paper. When I got my first typewriter at the age of 12, the first thing I wrote was a science fiction story called A Long Way From Home. I studied creative writing for 3 years at university, but I only started writing seriously a few years ago, when I turned thirty. I wrote a fifty thousand word novel, and then I started writing short stories. I wrote a story called Catch A Burning Star and submitted it to a webzine called Aphelion. They printed it, and that encouraged me to write another, which I sent to Quantum Muse. That got printed too, so I wrote another. And another… And I tried to make each one better than the last.

Which authors do you regard as being an influence on your writing content and style?

GLP: I was lucky that my local library had a very good selection of science fiction books for young readers - stuff like Brian Earnshaw’s Dragonfall 5 stories and Heinlein’s Have Space Suit Will Travel - which hooked me into the genre at an early age. As I grew older, I moved on to the short stories of Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven. I learned a lot about pacing and style from Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Elmore Leonard, Hunter Thompson and Raymond Chandler. And I learned a lot about science fiction from Cordwainer Smith, Samuel Delany, M.John Harrison, Iain M. Banks, William Gibson, and Olaf Stapleton.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

GLP: Good question. Sometimes I sit at the keyboard and the words flow - other times it takes determination and hard work. I keep a notebook handy and try to jot down observations, snatches of dialogue, and ideas. Sometimes a memory or an article will suggest a scene but the final version of the story’s often far removed from the idea that first sparked it off. The text evolves over successive drafts. Different themes come to the fore, or drop away. In the end, I can’t say exactly what prompted me to write this or that story in a certain way. For instance, with The Last Reef, the initial inspiration for the story came from a dream about blasting across a desert on a quad bike listening to skull-crunching music from speakers implanted directly into the auditory centres of the brain. But when I came to write it, the main character’s personality shaped the direction the story went in, taking it away from the original idea into new and unexplored territory.

How difficult was it to first get published? For example, I understand The Last Reef went through a few iterations before being accepted.

GLP: I went through four rewrites with The Last Reef. Jetse de Vries, the editor who picked the story off the slushpile, liked the characters and the scenario but felt the finale needed tightening up. We tossed the story back and forth until we were both happy with it, and then Jetse passed it to the rest of the editorial team.

Is science fiction a genre which you ‘got into’ on purpose, or did it just kind of happen?

GLP: I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to write SF. Apollo 18 docked with a Russian Soyuz module when I was 4 years old. And then we had Star Wars and all the footage from Skylab, and the new space shuttle that promised us easy access to orbit… I write SF because I grew up with it, and because you have to write what you know and love.

Where do you do write?

GLP: I’ve got a study at the back of the house with a window that looks out onto the fir trees at the back of the garden. One wall’s lined with books and there are racks of CDs against another. I tend to write after my family have gone to bed, so it’s very quiet in here.

Could you tell us something about what you are working on at the moment?

GLP: There are a couple of other ideas I’m playing with but I don’t want to say too much about them right now. I find that if I talk too much about a story, I lose the urge to write it. My wife understands - she won’t read a partial draft of anything I’ve written; it has to be finished before she’ll look at it.

Have you written a novel, or are you writing one?

GLP: I’ve written an SF thriller called Silversands. And I have a file of notes for an all-action space opera with the working title The Burning Sky.

You have also written poetry. Which do you prefer, fiction or poetry?

GLP: I only ever dabbled in poetry. At heart, I’ve always wanted to be a fiction writer.

What are your writing plans for the future?

GLP: For the time being, I’m going to keep writing short fiction. I’d ideally like to have the time to concentrate on writing nlovels, but I’m getting some recognition for my short fiction, and I’d like to spend time to build on that.

What is your favourite icecream?

Strawberry.

Thanks for taking time out to answer these questions, and we’re looking forward to Ack-Ack Macaque in a forthcoming Interzone.

See a 2007 interview with Gareth Lyn Powell.

I just thought I’d mention that we’ve interviewed a few ‘celebrities’ in the Science Fiction and Fantasy area.

See all interviews here.

The most recent being (in no particular order):
Philip K. Dick (imagined)
Christopher Priest
Greg Bear
Gareth Lyn Powell
Closet Sci-Fi Geek (Stephanie Brail)
Trudi Canavan
Gerald Libonati
The Prey Producers
Mark Davis at Retro-Juice

He’s been published on-line and in print and has had his work translated into Hebrew. His blog can be seen here.

He has already reviewed two publications : Scifantastic and Universe Pathways.

We welcome him to the team, and remember, if you’d like to contribute in any way, please let us know via the feedback form.

Gareth is a science fiction writer residing in the UK. He made his first professional fiction sale to Interzone in 2005 and in February 2006 he won the Firebrand Great Fiction Award from SFReader.com, for his story Sunsets And Hamburgers.

His work has been published in magazines in Europe and the USA, and translated into Greek, Polish, Portuguese and Hebrew.

He has recently has a story called The Last Reef in Interzone Issue 202, and there is another called Ack-Ack Macaque coming out in a forthcoming issue.

You see read three of his early stories online at Aphelion : The Kitten Box, Catch A Burning Star and Six Lights Off Green Scar.

Such was the pull of the game Civilisation, he lost about three months playing it. Eventually he had to smash the disks and delete the game files; and then ask for an extention from his publisher.

It makes me wonder what other ‘excuses’ (not that this is really an excuse) authors might come up with to get an extention to their writing deadlines.

Here are my favourite five:

5 : I haven’t worked on the manuscript at all, been playing a computer game instead.
4 : My dog ate it.
3 : I’ve finished all the words, it’s the order of them I’m working on.
2 : Can I have an extention, the manuscript is now longer than I originally thought.
1 : My gerbil is ill.

Anyone interested are free to use the above excuses.

Numerous writers will be there to sign books and generally wander around and chat.

So far, the attendence list (subject to change):

Neal Asher
Steve Cockayne
Mike Carey
Erin Hunter
Eoin McNamee
Matthew Skelton
Mark Robson
SF Said
Amanda Hemingway
Philip Reeve
John George
Paul Kearney
Sam Enthoven
Heulwen Jones
James Barclay
Justina Robson
Stan Nicholls
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Mark Chadbourne
Chaz Brenchley
Juliet McKenna

As per usual, it’s best to check with the shop beforehand; but it sounds like a good event!

Via: SFF World.

I’ve never been to that particular bookshop, but is it big enough to hold all these people?

A Rare Philip K Dick interview on his book, A SCANNER DARKLY. Also words from cast and crew from the film.

This is pretty neat. I don’t remember seeing any parts of it before. See how many of the A Scanner Darkly book covers you’ve seen or own.

I also noticed loads of other movie/trailer excerpts which are linked to Philip K Dick. Very much worth a persual (if you’ve got a spare couple of weeks).

Well, at least at the time he’s involved in voice-acting on Bloodspell - the episodical animated fantasy.

Now, can you work out which character(s) he’s voicing?

After last week, talking about Bill Pullman to play Philip K Dick, now from the Philip K Dick estate comes this interesting blurb:

Paul Giamatti Set to Play Philip K. Dick in Biopic.
Actor to produce along with Dick daughters.

Academy Award Nominee Paul Giamatti (Shorty In Paycheck) has an eye towards starring as renowned sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, in a biopic being produced by his newly formed Touchy Feely Films, in collaboration with Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin and Lenny Bekerman.

Through its Electric Shepherd Productions (“oh boy” - Rich), the Philip K. Dick Estate (Isa Dick Hackett) is also producing the authorized non-traditional bio.

The film will interweave the author’s life, his fiction, and incorporate elements of Dick’s last unfinished novel, The Owl in Daylight. Michael Siegel, who represents the PKD Estate and ESP, helped make the deal.

Tony Grisoni is attached to write the screenplay - his most recent work, Brothers of the Head, is currently in theatres. Anonymous Content is awaiting the release of Babel and is currently in production on Case 39, starring Renee Zellweger. Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly is currently in theaters.

Jason Koornick will also serve as an Executive Producer on the project.

Trudi Canavan broke onto the fantasy scene with the Black Magician Trilogy’s first book, The Magician’s Guild, which was well received, followed by The Novice and The High Lord. She has recently completed the Priestess of The White.

Back in 2001, as The Magician’s Guild was being released, did you expect such praise and utimately for it to sell so well?

Everyone hopes their work will sell well, but few expect it. It surprised me that it sold at all, and then the degree of surprise I felt kept getting greater. I was surprised by the success in Australia, then astonished by how well it did in the UK.

Prior to completing The Magician’s Guild, did you have the continuation of the story in mind, or did that come later?

I worked and reworked that trilogy so many times over so many years that by the time I was nearly finished I was sure I didn’t want to write anything further in the same world with those characters again. But as I came close to finishing the last polish of The High Lord a sequel idea began to form. It didn’t have an ending, however, and I was content to work on another story and world and let the idea develop in the back of my mind. By the time I neared the end of writing the Age of the Five I knew I was ready to return to the world of Kyralia, and by then another idea – for a prequel – had also come to me.

I first caught sight of The Black Magician Trilogy in 2005 in a bookshop; it was the simplistic, yet eye catching front covers which originally drew me to them. This design, as I understand it, was not the original. Which do you prefer?

I like each of the three cover designs for different reasons. The graphic designer in me loves the UK design for it’s striking customer-attracting simplicity. The writer in me loves the Australian covers, because I worked closely with the artist to get the details as accurate as possible. The artist in me loves the US covers for the sheer skill in the illustrations (even while the author in me shakes her head at the flying horse on The Novice).

Was there a commercial reason for changing the covers, for example, different covers for different countries?

That’s exactly it. The three publishing companies know their own markets best, and commission covers accordingly.

When was the idea and storyline for the Trilogy originally conceived?

1992 – just before the Barcelona Olympics. I’d seen a late-night news report about the homeless being rounded up and trucked out of the city so they wouldn’t make the city look untidy. That night I dreamed the first chapter of The Magicians Guild. Generally dreams don’t make good stories, but I wrote it down anyway, and later other scenes and ideas came along to turn it into a larger story.

Inspiration can come from anywhere; was there anything specific you were inspired by for The Black Magician Trilogy?

Oops, I just answered that.

How difficult was it to first get published?

It took quite a few years. The first publisher I sent the Black Magician Trilogy to never replied – not even a rejection. The next held onto it for two years until I gave up and withdrew it. At this point I would have been happy to receive rejection letters! By the time the trilogy found a publisher it had been on editors’ desks for about five years.

Do you have a few quick tips for aspiring authors?

Read a lot. Write a lot. You have to be writing for the love of it, because most writers don’t make much money. Find out as much as you can about how the publishing and bookselling industry works, and you will not only understand and therefore be able to work within the limitations of it, but editors, publishers and booksellers love it when you show interest and understand the difficulties they face.

Could you tell us a bit about what you are currently working on?

At the moment I’ve given myself six months ‘long service leave’. Unfortunately, the four months I’ve taken so far have been mostly filled with writing-related work – fanmail, the website, conventions, publicity, etc. and I really don’t feel as if I’ve had much rest at all. I’d really like to write some more short stories, and polish up a novella I wrote years ago, but I still haven’t found the time.

I am not aware of any short stories which you have written; did you go straight into publishing novels, as opposed to publishing short stories first?

I’ve had two short stories published: Whispers of the Mist Children in Aurealis magazine and Room for Improvement in an anthology called Forever Shores, and they both won awards. They’re probably only available in Australia, but if you wanted to read them badly enough there are several Australian sf bookshops willing to ship copies overseas.

As an action fantasy story, The Black Magician Trilogy has the promise of transferring to the big screen - lavish scenery with a twisting plot and believable characters; have films rights been looked at regarding any of your books?

I have a film agent, but there have been no offers so far. I’m staying realistic about the chances. Most fantasy turned into films is either a classic (Lord of the Rings) or a children’s book (Harry Potter) or both (Narnia). In fact, while a film would be great I think an anime series might work better.

You’ve been painting since you could pick up a paintbrush; do you see similarities in painting on a canvas, with writing on a page?

There are similarities – too many to list here - but also some aspects that don’t translate from one to the other. I’ve turned both into work at one time or other. The main difference is that a painting is relatively static. It is a snapshot, even if it contains some narrative aspects. A story evolves and travels.

What medium do you prefer to work with, in terms of your artwork?

Oils are my favourite medium. I just love the buttery texture.

What is your favourite icecream?

Actually… I don’t like icecream all that much! But if I do have a bit I’ll go for a small bit of something luxurious like cookies and cream. Chocolate is my preferred treat.

Thank you for your time Trudi. We’re looking forward to seeing Sonea again in The Traitor Spy Trilogy.

These people have said that Bill Pullman is in talks to land the role of playing Philip K. Dick.

And I quote:

Details are thin as the producers of this indie production haven’t yet seen fit to list the film in IMDb’s database. The movie is currently entitled Panasonic (very non-PKD) which will be hell for them come search engine marketing time. Shooting is scheduled to begin next month with musician Matthew “Break My Stride” Wilder taking the director’s chair.

And I end quote.

Check it out. Made me laugh.

By the way, that’s Bill PULLMAN from the ever so cool Brain Dead, not Bill PAXTON from the ever so not cool Big Love. Saying that, they both starred in Brain Dead.

Now the serious questions is: Who will star in a biographical film of the life of Philip K. Dick? (I bet you a vanilla ice-cream the PKD Society won’t let it happen. Ever.)

Let us know who you think would be able to do the PKD biz with the feedback form, and we’ll make you a bit famous - or something.

To be honest, I was going to put up some ideas, but my mind is a blank…

Blimey, you could almost get confused (with the Bills), like when people talk about the Gregs: Greg Bear, Greg Egan or Greg(ory) Benford.

I believe that Blood Music was originally a short story which was expanded into a novel and, in turn, was your first major break through. Where do you get your ideas from, in terms of the science side, and also the characterisation?

GB: Ideas come from all over–we swim in them. Characters are partly from inner voices, mostly from observing other people with critical affection. The idea for Blood Music was originally sparked by an article on biochips in a 1982 issue of New Scientist. That led to a cascade of thoughts, and the conclusion that DNA must be in some sense computational–a fairly radical idea at the time, old hat today. Blood Music as a short story won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards in 1984, and my novella, Hardfought, one a Nebula that year as well.

Could you tell us a bit about who influences your work and have they changed over time?

GB: That’s a book-length essay in itself! Not at all answerable in the length of this interview. I read widely– nonfiction, journals, and fiction–watch lots of movies, a fair amount of the very best television (plus news on all the news channels) and even play a few games now and then on the computer. Every novel, as I write, I refer to one or more exemplars–novels that I really admire. They give me the energy to keep plowing on, whatever mood I may be in day to day.

The Forge Of God and Anvil Of Stars, The Movies: Do you have any upto date news on these?

GB: Warner Bros. still has them under option. No news at the moment.

How did this movie project come about?

GB: My Los Angeles agent and partner, Vince Gerardis at Created By, worked with screenwriter Ken Nolan, who produced a scriptment–a condensed screenplay in treatment form. That sold the project within a week of its being shown to Warner Brothers. That was almost four years ago, now!

What were/are your feelings on having something you’ve penned potentially translated to the screen?

GB: I’ll let you know when it actually happens!

Do you read any scifi/fantasy magazines/periodical? - I know that authors, sometimes, shy away from reading too much of their own genre for various reasons?

GB: I try to keep up with current sf, and am saddened by the difficulties faced by many of our best magazines. Short fiction is still a terrific way to launch a career. That venue seems increasingly under threat–but thankfully, there are still brave publishers, editors, and writers continuing the tradition.

Who are your favourite authors and why?

GB: A long list.

What is your favourite film and why?

GB: Another long list!

What was the last book you read, what did you think of it?
Where do you write?

GB: I have stacks of books everywhere in various stages of being read. At the moment, I’m moving rapidly through the Fagles and the Chapman translations of the Iliad–also, The Sotweed Factor by John Barth. I usually write in a separate office near our home.

Are you working on a novel/story at the moment? If so, could you share something about them to us?

GB: I’m in the last third of a rough draft of City At The End Of Time, set in both contemporary Seattle and in the last city on Earth, a hundred trillion years in the future. Lots of history to catch up on!

What is your favourite icecream?

GB: Vanilla.

Thanks very much Greg for your time in answering these questions.