Silversands (Pendragon Press, April 2010, 160pp) is the long-awaited debut novel by Gareth L Powell, one of the rising stars of the British SF scene.
Silversands
When the starship Pathfinder emerges through a wormhole into the Tau Ceti system, an explosion in the fuel tanks rips through the vessel, injuring one of the crew and stranding them in a planetary system settled sixty years earlier by the crew of the Anastasia.
Off-loaded to the planet Silversands, crew member Avril Bradley is attacked in the presence of retired policeman Cale Christie, who smuggles her away to a safe place. But while Christie survives the attack he is infected by a nanovirus which leaves him literally days to live, bare days to work out why Avril Bradley is a clone of the woman he once loved.
Days to crack the conspiracy around him, and to find a cure...
British SF
The colony world of Silversands is the latest in a long line of island based civilizations in British SF, running through Eric Brown's Meridian, Michael G. Coney's Arcadia, back to Clarke's Thalassa, and perhaps beyond. It would hardly be surprising, given Britain's island history and that writers take their influence from their surroundings, but it adds to the sense of a return to an arcadian idyll that runs throughout the start of all these titles, only to be disrupted by the events that form their plots.
This is not to assume that Powell ignores the trends of recent SF -- far from it, especially during the scenes set in space. But nanoware and interstellar flight are present solely to serve a purpose, while on the ground those with upgrades blend almost seamlessly into the background, until they are seen with a stranger's eyes:
Around them the bar was filling with curious colonists and Avril was surprised to see that many had space adaptions. A group to her left looked more android than human, while others sported synthetic skin or metal plates grafted from head to toe.
This lovely understatement contrasts starkly with much contemporary SF, such as is published in Asimovs, which piles gaudy detail on detail that is really only there to establish setting, and is completely un-naturalistic. Powell's approach is perhaps more realistic, since characters should only notice what is strange to them rather than describing the familiar, as is the case with much SF.
Gareth L Powell
Powell broke through in the January 2006 issue of Interzone with the title story from his collection The Last Reef and has become a regular contributor to that magazine, as well as to many recent British anthologies such as Conflicts, Future Bristol and Shine.
Silversands is a short novel at only 50,000 words --half the length of most recent novels, such as Lavie Tidhar's The Bookman, but that is simply continuing another tradition of novels around that length, such as Charles L Harness' Flight Into Yesterday (expanded into The Paradox Men) and The Rose, and Fritz Leiber's The Big Time.
It's a length that allows the novel it's lean, understated style without compromising plot twists. Silversands is a worthy addition to any devoted SF reader's library.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
