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A Comet of Ideas Looking for a Planet
From the frozen tundra of Jupiter's moon Europa, to a rainy night on Dartmoor. From an evening rush hour train bound for King's Cross, to a murderous interrogation room. From the hot city of Khartoum, to an interstellar data router that has started to malfunction. From the Falkland Islands, to a nightclub in the Kuiper Belt. Huw Langridge brings you 13 short science fiction stories to make you think about where we came from, where we're going, and who else might be with us.
103 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 27, 2013
About the author
Huw Langridge
10 books17 followersThanks to his English teacher at Holland Park School, Huw realised that writing (and reading) was actually pretty enjoyable, but it wasn’t until a few things happened during the 1990s that he realised that he could be inspired into bringing out his own literary voice.
Whilst lying on his back in the middle of a starry night with a bunch of friends on a summer beach holiday in Selsey Bill, staring into space while a CD player filled their heads with the epic 46-minute ambient track “Waiting for Cousteau” by Jean-Michel Jarre, Huw was filled with the vertiginous sensation that he could actually by lying on the bottom of the Earth, looking down at the universe, and it was only a little bit of gravity that was holding him in place.
A few years later, his father spent half of a meal in a London restaurant raving about a book he’d been reading about a cylindrical spaceship that was 40 kilometres wide. Huw started reading Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama himself and has since been smitten with hard sci-fi.
This was compounded by a cinema visit to have his mind expanded by the film Contact, which made him want to write his own kind of widescreen science fiction.
Several months of walking across the Jubilee Bridge in London, listening to great trance music and finding his eyes perpetually drawn to the staggering and new London Eye, Huw kept thinking it looked an awful lot like a spinning space station. An orbital scaffolding. And then his first novel “The Daedalus Transfer” was born. It helped that he was living alone in a studio flat. It kept the disturbances to a minimum, and also allowed him the time he needed to read a PDF download of an early draft of the 300 page International Space Station induction manual.
Other stories came later, many finding their way into magazines. And not all of them were science fiction, because Huw always loves a good spooky tale, and doesn’t want to see the traditional English ghost story die.
He grew up in London and, during his years working as a global IT troubleshooter for an oil exploration company, Huw travelled to a number of places that enabled him to find inspiration and tone for his stories. More recently he has travelled the world working on an operations team delivering high-calibre investment conferences.
In July 2003 Huw attended an Arvon Foundation novel-writing course at the residential retreat at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire. The course was tutored by Martyn Bedford ("The Houdini Girl" and "Acts of Revision") and Phil Whitaker ("Triangulation" and "The Face"). The guest author was Louise Welsh ("The Cutting Room"). Also in attendance was Ian Marchant ("Parallel Lines"). Huw has cooked for all of them, and is glad they survived the ordeal.
Huw's first short story publication was the science fiction piece "The Ceres Configuration", published in Issue 4 of Jupiter SF Magazine, released in April 2004. The story was described by Adrian Fry of Whispers of Wickedness as "A good old fashioned (yet high-tech) tale of approaching apocalypse, [which] served to remind me just what unpretentious science fiction can do when written by someone who clearly relishes every word."
In Autumn 2004 he produced an eNovel called Spireclaw.
Huw released his first print novel Schaefer's Integrity in December 2008 and is available at all major online booksellers. Further published short works have appeared in The Ranfurly Review, Reflection's Edge, Jupiter SF, 365tomorrows and Supernatural Tales.
His short story "Last Train to Tassenmere" received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror 2009.
In September 2010 he released his short story collection The Axiom Few, featuring three previously published stories and five stories new to the collection. His Axiom Few stories have received praise from a number of online SF review websites, such as SF Signal, SF Site and SF Crowsnest.
After his eNovel "Spireclaw" received praise online, Huw decided to release a non
Whilst lying on his back in the middle of a starry night with a bunch of friends on a summer beach holiday in Selsey Bill, staring into space while a CD player filled their heads with the epic 46-minute ambient track “Waiting for Cousteau” by Jean-Michel Jarre, Huw was filled with the vertiginous sensation that he could actually by lying on the bottom of the Earth, looking down at the universe, and it was only a little bit of gravity that was holding him in place.
A few years later, his father spent half of a meal in a London restaurant raving about a book he’d been reading about a cylindrical spaceship that was 40 kilometres wide. Huw started reading Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama himself and has since been smitten with hard sci-fi.
This was compounded by a cinema visit to have his mind expanded by the film Contact, which made him want to write his own kind of widescreen science fiction.
Several months of walking across the Jubilee Bridge in London, listening to great trance music and finding his eyes perpetually drawn to the staggering and new London Eye, Huw kept thinking it looked an awful lot like a spinning space station. An orbital scaffolding. And then his first novel “The Daedalus Transfer” was born. It helped that he was living alone in a studio flat. It kept the disturbances to a minimum, and also allowed him the time he needed to read a PDF download of an early draft of the 300 page International Space Station induction manual.
Other stories came later, many finding their way into magazines. And not all of them were science fiction, because Huw always loves a good spooky tale, and doesn’t want to see the traditional English ghost story die.
He grew up in London and, during his years working as a global IT troubleshooter for an oil exploration company, Huw travelled to a number of places that enabled him to find inspiration and tone for his stories. More recently he has travelled the world working on an operations team delivering high-calibre investment conferences.
In July 2003 Huw attended an Arvon Foundation novel-writing course at the residential retreat at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire. The course was tutored by Martyn Bedford ("The Houdini Girl" and "Acts of Revision") and Phil Whitaker ("Triangulation" and "The Face"). The guest author was Louise Welsh ("The Cutting Room"). Also in attendance was Ian Marchant ("Parallel Lines"). Huw has cooked for all of them, and is glad they survived the ordeal.
Huw's first short story publication was the science fiction piece "The Ceres Configuration", published in Issue 4 of Jupiter SF Magazine, released in April 2004. The story was described by Adrian Fry of Whispers of Wickedness as "A good old fashioned (yet high-tech) tale of approaching apocalypse, [which] served to remind me just what unpretentious science fiction can do when written by someone who clearly relishes every word."
In Autumn 2004 he produced an eNovel called Spireclaw.
Huw released his first print novel Schaefer's Integrity in December 2008 and is available at all major online booksellers. Further published short works have appeared in The Ranfurly Review, Reflection's Edge, Jupiter SF, 365tomorrows and Supernatural Tales.
His short story "Last Train to Tassenmere" received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror 2009.
In September 2010 he released his short story collection The Axiom Few, featuring three previously published stories and five stories new to the collection. His Axiom Few stories have received praise from a number of online SF review websites, such as SF Signal, SF Site and SF Crowsnest.
After his eNovel "Spireclaw" received praise online, Huw decided to release a non
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