Gareth Lyn Powell (born 1970) is a British author of science fiction. His works include the Embers of War trilogy, the Continuance series, the Ack-Ack Macaque trilogy, Light Chaser (co-written with Peter F. Hamilton), and About Writing, a guide for aspiring authors. He has also co-written stories with authors Peter F. Hamilton and Aliette de Bodard. [1] [2]
He has twice won the BSFA Award for Best Novel, for Ack-Ack Macaque in 2013 and Embers of War in 2019. Ack-Ack Macaque also became a finalist of the 2016 Seiun Award for Best Translated Long Work. [3] He has also been shortlisted for the Locus Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Canopus Award. [4]
Powell's short stories have appeared in a host of magazines and anthologies, including Interzone , Solaris Rising 3, and The Year's Best Science Fiction , and his story "Ride The Blue Horse" made the shortlist for the 2015 BSFA Award. Many of his shorter works have been brought together in the collections, The Last Reef (2008) and Entropic Angel (2017). His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Russian, Czech, Catalan, and Croatian. [5]
Born and brought up in the West Country, Powell started writing sci-fi stories at an early age. [6] He studied humanities and creative writing at the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales), where he cites Diana Wynne Jones and Helen Dunmore as early mentors. He has given guest lectures on creative writing at Bath Spa University, Aberystwyth University and Buckingham New University and has written a series of non-fiction articles on science fiction for The Irish Times .
His first four novels were favourably reviewed in The Guardian by Eric Brown. In 2021 it was announced that His Embers of War series would be adapted into a television series, directed by Breck Eisner. [7]
Powell's first book was a collection, The Last Reef and Other Stories . It compiles much of his short fiction from before 2008, including the Interzone reader's choice poll winner "Ack-Ack Macaque".
Silversands was Powell's debut novel. It was initially produced in a run of three hundred hardcover copies and an ebook edition, featuring the additional short story "Memory Dust", was made available by Anarchy Books. The reception was mostly favourable, including reviews from Interzone and Eric Brown in The Guardian . Brown regarded the novel as a "fine hi-tech romp" but was critical of what he called "a rushed and melodramatic dénouement." [8]
The Recollection is the second novel by Powell. The novel received mostly favourable reviews, including reviews from Locus [9] and Powell's second review from Eric Brown in his column in The Guardian . Brown said that the novel's set-pieces were "brilliantly realised" and that the book balanced its high concepts with the human story. He ended his review with "If you read only one space opera this year, it's got to be The Recollection". [10]
In 2012, Powell released his third novel via Solaris Books, Ack-Ack Macaque , based on the short story of the same name. A sequel, Hive Monkey, followed in 2014. The third volume of the trilogy, Macaque Attack, was released in January 2015.
Titan Books published his sixth novel Embers of War in 2018. A sequel, Fleet of Knives, followed in 2019; the trilogy was concluded with Light of Impossible Stars in 2020. A news series, Also from Titan Books, began in 2022 with Stars and Bones and continued in 2023 with Descendant Machine. All five of these novels were finalists for the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best novel, and Embers of War and Fleet of Knives were both finalists for the Locus Award.
Powell is married to the American SFF author Jendia Gammon, [11] who also writes under the name J. Dianne Dotson.
Author | Gareth L. Powell |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Elastic Press |
Publication date | August 2008 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
ISBN | 978-0-9553181-7-7 |
Author | Gareth L. Powell |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Pendragon Press |
Publication date | 10 April 2008 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 160 |
ISBN | 978-1906864064 |
Author | Gareth L. Powell |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Solaris Books |
Publication date | September 2011 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 400 |
ISBN | 978-1907519994 |
Author | Gareth L. Powell |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Solaris Books |
Publication date | December 2012 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 405 |
ISBN | 978-1781080603 |
Followed by | Hive Monkey |
Author | Gareth L. Powell |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Solaris Books |
Publication date | January 2014 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 384 |
ISBN | 978-1-78108-165-5 |
Preceded by | Ack-Ack Macaque |
Followed by | Macaque Attack |
Author | Gareth L. Powell |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Solaris Books |
Publication date | January 2015 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 347 |
ISBN | 978-1-78108-285-0 |
Preceded by | Hive Monkey |
Alastair Preston Reynolds is a Welsh science fiction author. He specialises in hard science fiction and space opera.
Eric Brown was a British science fiction author and The Guardian critic.
Interzone is a British fantasy and science fiction magazine. Published since 1982, Interzone is the eighth-longest-running English language science fiction magazine in history, and the longest-running British science fiction (SF) magazine. Stories published in Interzone have been finalists for the Hugo Awards and have won a Nebula Award and numerous British Science Fiction Awards.
Tony Ballantyne is a British science fiction author known for his debut trilogy of novels, titled Recursion, Capacity and Divergence. He is also Assistant Headteacher and an Information Technology teacher at The Blue Coat School, Oldham and has been nominated for the BSFA Award for short fiction.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Solaris Books is an imprint which focuses on publishing science fiction, fantasy and dark fantasy novels and anthologies. The range includes titles by both established and new authors. The range is owned by Rebellion Developments and distributed to the UK and US booktrade via local divisions of Simon & Schuster.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar has lived in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award—Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
Eugie Foster was an American short story writer, columnist, and editor. Her stories were published in a number of magazines and book anthologies, including Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Interzone. Her collection of short stories, Returning My Sister's Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, was published in 2009. She won the 2009 Nebula Award and was nominated for multiple other Nebula, BSFA, and Hugo Awards. The Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction is given in her honour.
Jason Sanford is an American science fiction author whose 2022 novel Plague Birds was a finalist for the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards. He's also known for his short fiction, which has been published in Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Year's Best SF 14, InterGalactic Medicine Show and other magazines and anthologies.
Aliette de Bodard is a French-American speculative fiction writer.
Will McIntosh is a science fiction and young adult author, a Hugo-Award-winner, and a winner or finalist for many other awards. Along with ten novels, including Defenders,Love Minus Eighty, and Burning Midnight, he has published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Interzone. His stories are frequently reprinted in different "Year's Best" anthologies.
The BSFA Awards are given every year by the British Science Fiction Association. The BSFA Award for Best Artwork is open to any artwork with speculative themes that first appeared in the previous year. Provided the artwork hasn't been published before it doesn't matter where it appears. The ceremonies are named after the year that the eligible works were published, despite the awards being given out in the next year.
The Last Reef and Other Stories is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer Gareth L. Powell. It compiles much of his short fiction from before 2008.
Ack-Ack Macaque is a 2012 science fiction novel by English writer Gareth L. Powell.
Ann Leckie is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, which features artificial consciousness and gender-blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel", as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award. Provenance, published in 2017, and Translation State, published in 2023, are also set in the Imperial Radch universe. Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in February 2019.
This is a list of the published works of Aliette de Bodard.
Nina Allan is a British writer of speculative fiction. She has published five collections of short stories, multiple novella-sized works, and five novels. Her stories have appeared in the magazines Interzone, Black Static and Crimewave and have been nominated for or won a number of awards, including the Grand prix de l'Imaginaire and the BSFA Award.
Dave Hutchinson is a science fiction writer who was born in Sheffield in England in 1960 and read American Studies at the University of Nottingham. He subsequently moved into journalism, writing for The Weekly News and The Courier for almost 25 years. He is best known for his Fractured Europe series, which has received multiple award nominations, with the third novel, Europe in Winter, winning the BSFA Award for Best Novel.
Anne Charnock is a British author of science fiction novels. In 2018, she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in science fiction, for her novel Dreams Before the Start of Time.