Gareth L. Powell is one of the emerging talents in British SF. I found his website when searching for British SF authors. He’s based in the West Country.

I think he can be taken as a great example of the success of free online publications. Powell’s early stories found a market on ‘zines like Aphelion and earned some good feedback. From there he has become a regular contributor to Interzone, winning their reader’s poll in 2007 for best story. He also started up the Friday Flash Fiction craze that involved several writers publishing short fiction on their blogs for free. Something I’ve been inspired to do as well.

Having read a few of Powell’s stories on line, as well as his flash fiction, I ordered a copy of his collection The Last Reef from Elastic Press. I wasn’t disappointed.

Powell’s prose is clean and fast paced but he still manages to evoke believable characters and interesting worlds. He lets the details sneak in and you do have to work as a reader, he’s not going to spoon feed you. However his writing is never oblique or pretentious, it just requires a little more than open eyes to get the most from it.

Particular highlights for me are ‘The Redoubt’, dealing with life, love and artificial reality, the space opera Six Lights off Green Scar, the surreal and humorous ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ (for which Powell won the Interzone readers’ poll 2007), the grim flash fiction ‘The Long Walk Aft’ and ‘Sunsets and Hamburgers’ a story about a resurrected Omega man and woman.

To be honest there really isn’t a duff story in here. They are all entertaining and tightly written. I’m looking forward to Gareth’s first novel Silversands, and reading more of his short fiction. I’ve placed a link to his page on my links page.

Do yourself a favour and get this book now. It is available on Amazon.