My Falkland Islands Experience - Part 4 of 4

It's about 8am on Saturday 19th September 1998 and I'm having a cooked breakfast in a little cafe in Mount Pleasant Air Force base on the Falkland Islands. After I've finished eating I walk across the road with my colleagues and check in to board the plane home to the UK. We're hitching a ride home with the RAF. there are no scheduled flights to and from the Islands to the UK so the only way to travel is by chater flight (see part 1) or by buying a spare seat on an army rotation plane.

After a couple of hours of waiting we walk out across the tarmac (no transfer buses here). It's quite a trek to the 737. We board, settle in and soon the plane is taxiing out to the runway.

My first thought as we soared into the patchy clouds was how intensely the plane seemed to be banking as it climbed. I wondered if the pilot was showing off to his buddies in the back just how he could push the flight envelope of a 737 in the same way as he could with a jet fighter. It was nerve-racking, those first few minutes, but then we levelled into a steadier climb.

I had an aisle seat on the left side of the plane and I looked across the two men sitting beside me and out the window where a fighter jet hovered just off our wing. There was another fighter on our other wing. It may sound cheesy to say this but I really felt a surge of pride to know that this flying British military target, a plane full of officers of various ranks, was being safely escorted out of Argentinian airspace. After twenty minutes the fighter pilots waved to us and banked away.

Our 737 was headed to Ascension Island, some eight hours away. Ascension is a tiny little rock that sits in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean just below the equator. It's a military base and little else, and it serves as a refueling stop for flights between the Falklands and the UK. Because the flight to the UK is more than twelve hours long, we will get a new flight crew in Ascension that will be woken up just in time to fly us the rest of the way back to Brize Norton.

We're an hour and a half into the flight. We've had our lunch and I'm glad to be going home. I've been reading Stephen Baxter's book Titan. I've got my headphones on now and I'm listening to music. But why is the plane banking? Why is it still banking. Why is it still banking? We've turned through 180 degrees. I remove my headphones just in time to hear the last few words of the pilot's announcement, stating that we'll be dumping fuel just before we land.

I turn to the man next to me and ask him what was said. "We're going back to the Falklands," he replies. When I ask why, he just shrugs.

An hour and a half later and fuel is spilling off the wings as we shed every last drop so that we're not too heavy when we drop to the tarmac at the right speed for landing. We taxi back to where we started, de-plane, and walk back into the terminal, and still we don't know why.

We wait for two hours in the terminal before being told that we can re-board the plane. Which we do. And the whole process starts again. We taxi, we take-off, we climb, we bank, we are escorted out of Argentinian airspace, we get another meal. This time we carry on flying, and nobody is any the wiser as to why we had to turn back. Towards the front of the plane I can see our Operations man talking at length with the man sitting next to him. Perhaps he knows what's going on. All I know is that a three hour round-trip followed by a two hour wait means we are 5 hours behind schedule getting back to the UK. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

Later than evening we descend to Ascension Island in the dark. It's midnight and because we are in an army base our movement is restricted. We are taken off the plane over to a fenced compound where you can get drinks and, for 50p I got a stamp in my passport that says "Wide Awake Air Force Base, Ascension Island". We wait while the plane is refuelled. Then we wait some more. Then we get back on the plane and we wait some more. Then there is an announcement to tell us that there is a problem with the aeroplane, and that we will not be flying tonight. Our flight has been rescheduled for 2pm the following day.

We all disembark and return to the fenced area and wait some more. Then we are loaded into coaches and taken through the dark hills to some sort of community centre where we are given a meal. By now it is nearly 3am. After our food, we board the coach and head to an army barracks where we bunk down for the night.

The following morning it feels like summer. We have come away from two weeks in temperatures of minus five and here we are in equatorial heat. We drive through the red rock and dust. On top of every hill is a cluster of pristine white dishes pointing vertically at the sky to geosynchronous satellite directly above us. This image stays with me and finds it's way into my story The Techipre Filament. Back at the airbase I'm told by our Operations man that the guy he'd been sitting next to was the person we'd turned back to the Falklands to pick up. Apparently, after our flight had taken off, he had discovered that his wife back in the UK had kidnapped his child. He needed to urgently return home to deal with it. The next flight out was two weeks away. The army looks after it's own, so we went back to get him.

Back in the fenced compound I use a payphone to try to call anyone and everyone I could think off to let them know I had been delayed. I tried family, friends and the parents of friends, but nobody was answering. Hopefully nobody was worried about me not returning home the night before.

We board the plane in the early afternoon heat and across the aisle from me the three seats are taken up by two officers flanking a poor dishevelled man who looked to be South American. He was in handcuffs. Apparently he'd been found in a small boat on one of the rocky shores of the island. How he'd got there was anybody's guess.

Once airborne the rumour mill was spinning again. Apparently there had been nothing wrong with the plane. Well, that wasn't strictly true. There was a problem with the plane; it was a faulty indicator light that had been reported back in Brize Norton before the plane even came to the Falklands. But the fault was not a reason to ground the plane, and not the reason why they turfed us off the flight and into barracks the night before. The real reason was this...

After our little about-turn in Falklands airspace, we ended up being delayed by 5 hours. The second flight crew at Ascension had been woken for the UK leg as normal, so when they came to board the plane, it was five hours too late. This, plus a potential eight hour flight time on the 2nd leg meant that they would be over their twelve hour allowance (I hope you're keeping up!) Now, regulations state that they are not allowed to fly twelve hours after being woken up, so they were ineligible to fly. They had to sleep again, and there was no other crew to take us. So we all had to wait till the crew were ready again the next day.

The remainder of the flight was uneventful. I watched a film called Shooting Fish on one of the little handheld VHS players that had apparently been donated by Richard Branson. We reached Brize Norton late on Sunday night. The extravagance of the oil business was such that we ordered a taxi from nearby Swindon to collect the three of us and drive us down the M4 to London. We waited ages for the taxi to collect us and I remember spending an hour on a mobile phone to the team in the Falklands because one of the laptops had a virus. I recall that they had asked me to stay in the Falklands for the whole month, the full length of the drilling operation, but I couldn't, I had to be back in the UK to move out of my flat.

The taxi to London cost £150. I got home at 4am on Monday morning. Why is it that when you return from a trip abroad, an adventure, your humble home always seems so small?

My Falkland Islands Experience - Part 3 of 4

I'm sitting in a Bristow personnel transport helicopter built to carry about 30 people. We're hovering about 2 feet above the runway at Mount Pleasant Airforce Base and I'm wearing a ridiculous (but lifesaving) 1-piece suit with rubber seals around the neck, wrists and ankles. Some of the other guys who I'm sharing this flight with have been in the training simulator and passed an exam to be here (a dummy helicopter cabin is dunked upside down into a swimming pool and if you don't escape to the surface, you don't pass the exam, among other things). My training consists of a 20 minute video, most of which is about how to put the suit on. The video told me that is you're not wearing the suit when the helicopter ditches into the frozen South Atlantic, then you'll live for about 1 minute and 40 seconds. With the suit, you get to tread water for an additional 6 minutes before freezing to death. It's hard to know which is better, given that nobody could get to you that quickly in the middle of the South Atlantic.

This is my first helicopter ride and it's smooth as we lift up into the clear morning sky and traverse the expanse of the land, northward over the occasional house (or farm?) towards the sea. 150km and an hour or so later, the rig comes into view. A little floating city, an oasis in the choppy grey sea. That "H" looks bloody small. Are we really going to land on that? The pilot deftly swings us into position above it and for a moment I have this horrific sensation that everything is fluid and moving (which they are) and all these things need to touch and connect with precision, despite this fluidity. It also feels like we are still, and the world around us is moving, and that the pilot is somehow controlling the platform under us, rather than the helicopter. It's precarious and frightening, and exhilarating.

After a short safety briefing we're shown to our 4-man dormitory. I get the upper bunk on one side and it has a little green curtain that you pull across and a small reading light above your head. This was the most comfortable bed I have ever been in. I was cosy, in my t-shirt and boxers, curled up in bed reading my book, in a steel encased room which was hanging off the underside of an oil rig, 20 metres above the icy, dark, churning ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere (except the Falklands). Strange and incredible.

The food on the Borgny Dolphin was the best in the world. I was told that each plate cost $40 to get to you, when you factor in the location and everything else. And this is an all you can eat kind of place. These crews work 12 hours on and 12 hours off and it's clear to see that an army marches on it's stomach. If I had to battle the elements, hanging of the side of a rig in the dawn hours, I'd want to be able to eat as much as I liked too.

What was originally going to be a 24-hour stopover turned into three days because the weather came in, making flights for the helicopter impossible. Once I had configured the email clients (yes that was all I came here to do, although it was a little more complicated back then), I sat back and read my book for the remainder of the stay. Fascinating though it was doing a tour of the rig, seeing how all it all worked, in all honesty there's not a lot else you can do without getting in the way.

At one point I decided to test the local phone line. In one of the operation houses I picked up a handset, dialled 9 and got the dialling tone in London. I called my flat, to see what my flatmate was up to. The phone was answered by one of our friends, who was visiting. Apparently my flatmate, his girlfriend, and the friend, were crowded around my PC at home playing Micro Machines (a game we were all addicted to) as I called. The 2 hop satellite delay made the conversation a little stifled, but at least it worked.

The day we flew back to Port Stanley the helicopter stopped off at a little farm in the north of the Island to pick up some eggs. These would undoubtedly be going back to Mount Pleasant to make omelettes for the army boys.

My Falkland Islands Experience - Part 2 of 4

It's 4:30am, mid-September 1998 and I'm up and about, making a quick cup of coffee in my hotel room and getting dressed for a day at the portacabin, sorry office. When I'm dressed I plug in the headphones on my CD Walkman and step out into the frozen night. It's perfectly still and perfectly clear. I listen to Paul Carrack's album "Beautiful World" and I walk to the other side of the sleeping town of Port Stanley. The stars are unrecognisable above me but they are present in their millions in a truly breathtaking vista. There's no pollution here.

My workday began at 5am, which was 9am in the UK. I was dealing with our internet service provider in Wigmore Street in London, and the Cable and Wireless folks in Aberdeen. Come 1:30pm, when it was 5:30pm in the UK, my day came to an end, and I was free to please myself for the afternoon. The Head of Operations offered me one of the SUV's to go driving if I liked, but I couldn't drive. However there was much to explore in Stanley after all.

One of the things that was rammed home to us right after our arrival on the Island was that it wasn't wise to walk off the roads. Unexploded Argentinian mines, remnants from the 1982 War, had not been fully located and removed, even though the British mines had been. We had maps of where we'd put ours, but sadly the Argentinians didn't furnish us with theirs. The weight of this problem lies heavy on the land and infects one's view of the beautiful terrain. You feel trapped, confined to preset roads and pathways. On Ross Road, down by the water there is a little shack; a shop where you can pick up a free copy of the minefield map, where green areas are considered safe, blue areas contain possible danger, and red areas where mines are still believed to be buried. I took a copy and still have it. For a while I had it in a frame on my bedroom wall. Somehow I'd looked at the different shades of danger and seen art. But the shop on Ross Road doesn't just provide maps. Here is a gallery of photographs of the effects of these landmines. Children and adults with missing arms and legs. On the floor are shards of twisted metal. Pieces of rusted ordnance that served as examples of the indiscriminate power of these impersonal maiming devices.

There is a supermarket in Port Stanley. I don't know what it's like now, but at the time you didn't want to risk buying the fresh food. With no agriculture to speak of, the Islands were reliant on a weekly plane that flew in from Chile, loaded with produce. I seem to remember eating a lot of Pot Noodles from the supermarket. It was hard to find things that were still inside their sell-by date.

The Victory bar was the main pub in Stanley, and for a fairly accurate description of that I suggest you read Remnants, because a key scene takes place there. All the stuff about the pen, and the toilet, and the pool table mentioned in the story, were absolutely true.

Across the water, to the north of Stanley the word "Barracouta" had been written on the side of the hill in huge letters. I'll never forget reading that word every day and wondering what it meant. It was years later that I found out this and other words written on that hill were the names of Royal Navy hydrographic survey ships. The history of this place was palpable. It wasn't in the architecture, it was in the land, put there by real people with real stories.

One afternoon a few of us decided to go penguin hunting. September, I was told, was a little early in Spring for them but we might get lucky. So we jumped into an SUV and drove out to the northeast, around the inlet, where a derelict ship sat rusting in the water. We parked up and followed paths around the beautiful sandy beaches, all of which were cordoned off in case a landmine washed up. Such a shame. These paths led from one Argentinian gun emplacement to the next. These windy, exposed hilltop locations provided beautiful views of unspoilt grassland; sad therefore that these vantage points were used for killing. We saw no penguins, just graffiti ridden bunkers and rusty cannons pointing at long departed foes.

One day we received an invitation from the Government of the Falkland Islands to attend a drinks reception at the town hall. We went, with the strict instructions that we were not to divulge whether we thought we had found oil (we hadn't, only traces of oil in porous, ashy rock, itself the remnants of an ancient Argentinian volcano that had flooded the basin making it difficult to find. Time may reveal there to be some irony in this). These people had other day jobs as farmers and such like. They seemed to be moonlighting as government officials. Of course, their sole purpose was to extract information from us by getting us drunk. The government wanted to know if their economy, and the future of the islands, was going to change for good. The discovery of oil here would undoubtedly be seismic.

All the while, the Borgny Dophin mobile rig was being anchored into position in a location set by our geologists. And one morning I got an early call, waking me from sleep. It was the Head of Operations. "Get ready and meet us up at the house. Today you get to go to the rig."

To be continued in Part Three.

My Falkland Islands Experience - Part 1 of 4

All this stuff in the news about the commencement of offshore drilling in the Falkland Islands brings back vivid memories of the previous drilling round which took place in 1998, which I was there for. I wanted to write a bit about it because the time I spent on the island gave me a lot of inspiration for my science-fiction writing, and three of my stories (Remnants, Galileo's Tides and The Techipre Filament) are based on memories of that trip. This blog entry will be in four parts.

At the time I was working for one of the oil companies drilling there (obviously) and I remember there was some speculation as to whether I would get to go with the exploration team who were headed down to the Islands. But, given the remote location it was decided that my IT skills would be essential to set up and maintain the email/phone link to the London office, and ensure the team's laptops and PC's were working at all times. The project was costing $100,000 a day, so downtime would be costly. The work itself was mundane, stuff I did on a day-to-day basis in London; it was just the location that was different.

So we flew out of Stansted airport one evening in mid-September 1998 on a 747 with 80 seats. An extravagant unbranded white aeroplane that, rumour had it, once belonged to the Sultan of Brunei. In our team were the chief geologist, the accountant and myself. The plane was full of drilling crew on rotation, most of whom were from Aberdeen. Although there were lie-flat seats, we spent most of the time in the conference room (yes, this plane had a conference room) talking about whether there really was oil in the North Falklands Basin, and what that would mean for the local economy. After a sixteen hour flight (not including a refuel at Recife), we disembarked onto the flat, endless tarmac at Mount Pleasant Airforce Base and rode in a minibus for an hour some 40 kilometres across a barren, sun-dappled, Dartmoor-like landscape.

Port Stanley, the world's most southerly "city" eventually appeared over the horizon. It seemed at first like little more that a row of bungalows and beach houses in a northern seaside coastal town, and grew to be only a little more. We stopped off at the staff-house, one such bungalow, where the other members of the team were staying, to say hello and regroup with the other Operations staff who'd flown down earlier. There was no room for me and the accountant in the house, we were checked into the Malvina House Hotel, a lovely little place that overlooked the inlet and the War Memorial, and had a quaint, chintzy charm that reminded me of beach holidays in the late 1970s. We all had dinner and drinks there the first night, and once again the drunken conversation between brash oil men turned to what seemed like a career-making or career-breaking question; was there oil in the Falklands? What I wanted to know was, would I get to go to the rig?

The next morning we travelled to the Stanley offices up on the hill to the east of the town. These were nothing but a set of portacabins and a small car park that were being passed between the different oil companies that had clubbed together to share resources thoughout the drilling round. We were to take it over in a couple of days and run our operation via Cable and Wireless data link to London (via an equatorial satellite and Aberdeen), and the offshore rig, via another satellite. At great cost, it would be possible to pick up the phone, both in the Stanley office and on the rig, dial 9, and get a local London line.

Port Stanley felt remote, no doubt about it. It was hundreds of miles from the nearest civilisation, and that remoteness gets under your skin. With an area the size of Wales and a population of only 2000, I really felt a long way from home. When I first arrived there I could think of nothing more desolate than having to live in such an empty location. But the Falklands has a certain magic about it, and I'm sure that anyone who goes there, never forgets it. I remember on the second day meeting a couple who had decided to move to the Islands from the UK only five months earlier, and I wondered how they could decide to make such a move. But all these years later I can sort of understand it.

Check back soon for Part Two, where I explore my surroundings.

Web Fiction Guide reviews Spireclaw

Fiona Gregory over at the Web Fiction Guide has given my eNovel "Spireclaw" a respectable 4 out of 5. She starts her review by saying...

"Within the first paragraph of this novel I knew I was in the hands of a skillful, practised writer. The atmosphere is eerie and evocative as the main character, Kieran, wakes from a disturbing dream and looks out the window into the dark, wind tossed yard."

But she seemed to struggle with the ending. This was either because she somehow managed to skip a big chunk of the penultimate chapter, then had to go back and read it after realising her error, or because she found the twist ending a little too shocking (and let's face it, she won't have been the first to have that reaction).

But she finishes up the review on a positive note by saying... "If you’d like to read a nicely crafted modern dark (subtly) supernatural mystery set in London, here’s your book."

All in all a very positive review.

The Future of The Axiom Few

SF Crowsnest's Rod MacDonald has confirmed himself as a fan of The Axiom Few. In his review of their latest appearance in Jupiter SF 27, he describes The Voidant Lance as "an electric story" and calls out to Channel 4 to make a TV series! High praise indeed and very inspiring for me.

SFRevu's Sam Tomaino speaks just as highly of the story and was also kind enough to link to my website for the follow-up.

So I'm five stories into The Axiom Few's world and I'm wondering whether to flesh out the canon with more short stories or press on with a novel. A novel, as I said before, would be a big undertaking and I have a few ideas for it, but I don't want to undermine the format of the short stories which seems to work so well. I rather like the idea of constructing the whole canvas (back story and all) in a collection of short stories that fit together as puzzle pieces, rather like they are beginning to now. Other ideas have crossed my mind, such as creating an Axiom Few blog with running, serialised entries by Geek and Archer. How does that sound?

But I cannot ignore SF Crowsnest's calls for The Axiom Few to be realised on TV or radio. A lofty dream, but radio feels like it might just be possible. Can anyone out there make any suggestions on where to begin?

Jupiter SF 27 Released

Jupiter SF 27 (Praxidike) landed on my doormat this morning. Great to see The Voidant Lance looming inside. As Ian mentions in the editorial, the follow-up story The Techipre Filament is located on my website, so head on over after finishing the one in Jupiter to see what the Axiom Few get up to next, Although those with a keen eye might realise that things are ever so slightly different about the team in The Techipre Filament. Hope you enjoy, and if you've followed the team since The Ceres Configuration back in 2004, or even The Darken Loop last year, I'd love to hear what you think of the stories. And of course, you can get Jupiter here.

From one ship to another

It's been a while since I've written, both here and any fiction. The real world took over in a big way, in the form of a conference our company ran in Trinidad, on a cruise ship, of all things. It was an adventure to say the least, but also the culmination of months of hard work. Though the event was successsful, I'm glad I'm on the Christmas side of it!


Even being away from my little son Oliver for 2 weeks was tough. He's 6 months old now and such a joyful little person to be around. Right now it feels more important to hang out with him than trying to finish The Fourdrinier Operator or reworking the short stories I've got in the pipelines.


That said, I'm really looking forward to seeing my next Axiom Few story in January's issue of Jupiter magazine. The Voidant Lance is inbound, and the team have a hell of a job ahead of them if they're to avert a global catastrophe.

On the back of The Voidant Lance, I'll be uploading the very next Axiom Few instalment to my website for you to read for free. The Techipre Filament, while not a direct follow up, will fill in some of the blanks created by the earlier stories.

And it might serve as a springboard...

Ian Redman, editor of Jupiter, rightly reckons that the ideas behind the Axiom Few adventures are growing beyond the short stories. Perhaps it's time I looked at expanding the concept into a full-blown novel. That is something I'd love to do.

Here's hoping that I can make the time to get it written. Maybe I'll be able to take Oliver to see the tie-in movie when he's old enough!

The View From Setcham Viaduct - A Halloween Ghost Story by Huw Langridge

At first I didn't understand why my Dad wanted to take me for a walk on that bright Sunday, but I think it had something to do with the newspaper.

He stood up from the dining room table after we'd finished a tasty lunch of roast beef and yorkshire pudding, scraping his chair back across the floorboards, and announced to Mum and Granny, 'I'm going to take him today. It may be the last time.'

I looked between the women at their reactions. Mum's face was defiant. She drew in a deep breath, as though she was trying to be brave. Granny began to weep, raising her napkin to wipe her eyes.

'Fancy walking off that big lunch, son?

I stood up. 'Where are we going?'

'I'll tell you on the way.' He walked round the table and out into the hall. I got up and followed him to the front door, where he was hunting around the console table for something. He slid open the drawer in the table and pulled out a small portable radio which was flecked with paint. He switched it on to check it was working. It was. He switched it back off, and slipped it into the back pocket of his corduroys. 'Put your shoes on, lad.'

I turned and ran into the living room, filled with anticipation, for this was going to be an adventure. On the way I could hear Mum and Granny speaking in low tones in the dining room and I wondered if our excursion was the subject of their private conversation.

My shoes were on the floor by the settee. I had taken them off earlier to curl up and watch television. I sat down and pulled them on, and as I tied my shoelaces my eyes crossed the room to the small table next to Dad's chair. His glasses were resting on the Sunday paper, and I now saw the article he had been tapping with his pen before getting up to lay the table before lunch.

The headline read: ANALOGUE SWITCH OFF DATE SET

With my shoes on I approached the newspaper to catch some more of the story, but before my eyes could focus on the smaller text in the body of the article, Dad appeared in the doorway and said, 'Ready?'

'Yes,' I said as I followed him out to the front door, which was now open.

Dad called to the women. 'Back later!'

'Okay,' replied my Mum. And moments later we were walking down the garden path.

We started towards town but before we reached the old railway bridge, under which you would walk to go to the high street, we changed direction and turned along a public footpath that led uphill beside the bridge.

After a short walk past some overgrown blackberry bushes (I picked one as we passed and popped it into my mouth), we turned onto a cycle path that was once an old railway line. We walked in the opposite direction of town along the deserted concrete path, which was flanked on either side by houses that soon gave way to woodland. It was only then that Dad started to speak.

'Have you ever heard of the Beeching Report?'

I shook my head, 'No.'

Dad uttered a small laugh, 'Well I doubt it's something they teach in school.' He dug his hands into his pockets. 'Dr Beeching was appointed by the government in the 1960s to see if he could make Britain's railways more cost effective. You see, till then, although the trains had been providing an excellent service, the railways weren't making any money. In fact, the whole system was losing money hand over fist. Dr Beeching wrote a report, which resulted in the closure of about three thousand stations across the country, and hundreds of miles of railway lines were left neglected or torn up. We're walking on one of the closed lines now.'

I looked back along the cycle path towards town. The straight line of the path cut through the trees and houses and still I could see no one out on this bright sunny day. I was surprised. It was the middle of the summer holidays. I tried to imagine a steam train chugging along this path, tooting it's whistle to children waving hankies as it thundered on it's journey.

'Why did he close this line?' I asked

Dad shrugged. 'That's a question a lot of people were asking. These lines provided a service to the country. Many protesters thought that it was foolish to undo all the work of the rail builders. They thought that one day these railways would pay for themselves. It just required a little faith. One such protester was your Grandad.'

We walked a little further in silence and soon we were upon Setcham Viaduct.

Dad spoke again, but his voice had gained a romantic edge, as though he was quoting something he'd heard or read. 'I can remember how this wrought iron structure we're standing on would strain under the weight of the locomotives that once bore down on it's bracing frame at such a frequency and lick.'

In the bright cloudless sky the warm afternoon sun beat down on us and I had to shield my eyes to see into the hazy distance. I looked out across the tree-filled gorge at Setcham Reservoir about two miles away to the south.

'Now it's just a cycle path and a method for ramblers to cross the valley,' he said. 'A waste if you ask me.'

The steel viaduct stood silent and strong against the wind and must have stretched for three-hundred metres at the place where it spanned the gorge. When we were halfway across it, Dad stopped and together we walked to the edge and looked over.

A vertiginous view of the tops of trees a hundred metres below greeted us and I stepped back a little. I didn't like heights all that much. They made my legs wobble.

'What do you know about how your Grandad, my Dad, died?'

I looked up at him as his eyes stared into the distance, 'Nothing. Only that he was a pilot in the war and he crashed his plane in the sea and swam to shore.'

'That's right. he did crash his plane, but like you say, he survived. You're thirteen years old now. Old enough to know the truth about what happened to him after the war. The truth about how he died. You see,' Dad patted the huge steel beam that flanked the walkway. 'He jumped from this very spot. He took his own life.'

My hand flew to my mouth.

Dad continued. 'I'll never forget the bright morning when his body was found at the base of the gorge after a plummetting from the top. I was eight years old.'

He let that thought sink in before continuing. 'Everyone in the town knew Dad. He was a hero, and a proud owner of the Distinguished Flying Cross. Do you know what that is?'

I nodded.

'And did you know what he did to get that?'

'He was a pilot.'

'Not every pilot gets the cross. When your Grandad's plane suffered a direct hit during battle, it came down just short of Folkestone within swimming distance of the shore. Dad rescued his rear gunner who was stuck and couldn't get out. He pulled the man to shore and saved his life. Dad lost an eye during the crash, which, he claimed, sometimes showed him phantom images of the night his plane came down into the cold English Channel. The gunner died about a year later after falling from the roof of his house.'

I was silent, unable to say anything. All I could think about was the picture Dad had painted for me, of a terrifying plane crash and a struggle for survival against all odds.

Dad shook his head slowly, looking towards the horizon, and seemingly speaking to himself. 'Funny that after surving something like that you'd meet your maker in such a mundane, silly way.'

I was unable to tell whether he was referring to Grandad, or the man he saved.

We started to walk again, continuing along the viaduct towards the other side. Any thoughts I'd had that this was what Dad had brought me out here to tell me had now been banished. The expedition was taking us further away from home, and it was about more than just showing me the place where Grandad died. I kept looking at the spot where he had jumped. It made me feel sorry for Gran, and sad that something bad must have happened to make someone do such a thing.

'After the war your Grandad took up a job working at Setcham End station.' He pointed up ahead, beyond the viaduct. About three-hundred metres ahead the trees rose to greater heights, and at the side of the path was an old signal box, tired and overgrown through neglect. Next to it were the remains of a set of steps which seemed to lead up to a footbridge which no longer existed.

'He worked as a platform announcer at Setcham End. His friendly voice had echoed through the station with announcements of trains arriving and departing. He did that for sixteen years after the end of the War. The old worn brown leather seat he sat on every day except the last Sunday of the month had acted as his home from home. I remember sitting on his knee many a time, eating iced gems as he made the announcements, and once or twice, if I'd been good, he would let me make the announcements too.'

'Did he look strange with only one eye?' I asked. By now we had come off the viaduct and the signal box was much closer. Beyond it I could see the remnants of Setcham End station. The path ran directly through it and although the platforms and ticket office were intact, they were in a sorry, abandoned state. The concrete platforms were covered in weeds that had burst through the cracks in the uneven paving slabs. These platforms that had once held so many old passengers as they waited for the next train, which Grandad would tell them was due to arrive at a quarter-to-five.

Before he answered, Dad moved over to one of the platforms, the one on the opposite side from the dilapidated ticket building. He took the radio out of his back pocket and placed it on the platform, then hoisted himself up to sit on the edge, dangling his feet, and he patted the spot next to him, encouraging me to sit too.

'He was a hero,' Dad said, 'but the local kids didn't see him that way. Or at least not quite. Yes, the kids loved that he was a pilot in the war. And if they were to stop and listen to his stories they would undoubtedly be in awe. But it never got that far. With his withered eye he cut a scary look. He was pretty much left alone. See that window there?'

I looked where Dad was pointing. In the ticket building was a side room with a small window that was scratched with dust and dirt.

'He loved working here. Once a month, on the last Sunday, he would travel south to Chester to visit the grave of his fallen gunner. He would go down there with Mum and take flowers. And then when they closed this station. Dad's job, along with many others, went with it. The reduction in travel though this area impacted the job market severely and Dad was such a proud man. He couldn't find other work. He protested with all the others, but nothing ever came of it.'

A gust of wind channelled through the station. It came from nowhere and was chillier than the air. Even in the warm sun, I started to rub my arms.

'Although we will never know for sure, and God knows Mum has a million questions she would love to be able to ask him, in the end the hardship was too much for him. One night he said he was heading out to the boozer with some of the men. Mum said he didn't seem any different that night. And the next morning he was found at the bottom of Setcham Gorge. And that was that.'

Dad picked up the small radio. He switched it on, turned up the volume and handed it to me.

'You have to be around here for this. You have to be near Setcham End, but if you turn the dial on the radio to the far right, so that the needle is almost buried at the end, then you can hear his announcments still. Put it up to your ear. You have to listen carefully. But he's there, in between the static, announcing trains still, just like he did all those years ago.'

I slowly turned the dial to the far right and raised it to my ear.

'Did Dr Beeching kill your grandfather?' My Dad said. 'In the eyes of the law, no. But there were other judges too. His family. And now I think he is going to die again.'

As I listened to the voice of my Grandad on that small portable radio, I thought of the newspaper article Dad had been tapping with the pen earlier that day.

THE END

Halloween Story - Plan B

Thanks for all your generally positive feedback on my previous post about whether to put up a serialised novel on this blog for Halloween. Most of you said you would read it.

Events however have forced my hand on this, and I'm not going to be able to progress it in the way I had hoped. Real life intervened and sent me to Trinidad and Jamaica on a rather hectic work trip in advance of an event we are holding in November. I didn't have enough time to finish The Fourdrinier Operator, so I will have to go with Plan B...

A short ghost story... which will hopefully give you the creeps when you read it this coming Saturday...

A Serialised Novel?

I'm thinking of trying a new thing. A serialised novel. I'm drawing near to the end of writing The Fourdrinier Operator, a supernatural/chicklit story I've been working on for a couple of years (it's a little like Spireclaw, with spooky twists and turns along the way), and I'm rather warming to the idea of serialising it on this blog; posting instalments of the story on a weekly basis, perhaps starting this coming Halloween.

Perhaps unlike other serialised blog stories (though I can't say for sure, I've not actually read any, and am therefore prepared to be corrected), this story is almost complete and therefore has all the foreshadowing, red-herrings and clue-planting necessary to bring the story to a pre-defined conclusion. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. On that basis it won't ramble on, creating narrative problems for the writer who is then challenged with sowing all the disparate plot-lines together in some cack-handed way.

So what do you think? Would you read it? Did you enjoy Spireclaw, At Steepdean Halt or Last Train to Tassenmere ? Would you like to read another, longer story, of a similar style, if it was presented in weekly bite-sized chunks?

Do let me know.

Book Soundtracks?

A friend of mine always listens to music when he reads books. A few years ago he told me he read the four Rendezvous with Rama books while listening to Vangelis, and that, like a cinematic experience, the two mediums merge to complement each other. Now, for him, listening to Vangelis reminds him of the awe he experienced when reading those books.

Now, I studied Music and am compelled to listen to, and dissect melodies and lyrics, and to that end tend to give music my full concentration while I'm hearing it. I told my friend that I couldn't concentrate on music and read at the same time, that it would feel like I was doing a disservice to both the musician and the writer. And that would especially be so for any music with lyrics.

However, the other day I decided to give it a go. As a lifelong fan of seminal synth band Tangerine Dream, but one who had gotten a little tired of their mid-to-late nineties output (for those who don't know, Tangerine Dream have released a staggering 107 albums since the sixties). Tangerine Dream were pioneers of electronic music in the seventies and eighties, but in the nineties, where keyboards, synths and samplers became commonplace it must have been harder for them to be as pioneering as before. And then they started using the saxophone too much, and basic keyboard presets clanged a little too often, but my thesis on the progression of Tangerine Dream's unique sound is for another day.

Having said that, I decided to give some of their more recent output a try. I purchased a handful of their latest albums, namely Mars Polaris, Views From a Red Train, Mota Atma and Seven Letters From Tibet. What better way to try out these instrumental records than to listen to them while reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). I'm most of the way through the first book as I write this.

Something about the synergy between the music and the books now seems to click. Perhaps because it has been a number of years since I was so heavily into studying and composing music, therefore my analytical thoughts on melodies and chord sequences are not so prevalent. I really am able to enjoy both. The music, when I hum it in my head now, really does remind me of the barren Martian landscape created in Kim Stanley Robinson's vision of the terraforming of our nearest planetary neighbour.

So now I think it is possible to enjoy the two at the same time, if you can find the right music to fit the right book. But make your choices carefully, as one really does influence the perception of the other.

Your train terminates here

"...Looking along the side of the train, which curved slightly away from me I could see that I had been the very last person to get off the train. The platform was empty. Everyone else had gone. The station sign read Tassenmere. The train had not terminated at Farnham after all..."

Supernatural Tales #15 is out now. My story "Last Train to Tassenmere" is nestled within its pages and I'm really looking forward to finding out what people think of it, as it's a story that's very close to my heart. Without wishing to give anything of the plot away, the idea for the story came from two different recurring nightmares I regularly had when I was in my twenties. Thinking about those nightmares even now brings a chill to my spine, and I was really pleased with how well the mood of those dreams translated across to the page. I really felt that I had nailed the weirdness I was trying to convey. It doesn't often happen, but when it does, you realise why you're writing in the first place.

You can get your copy of ST15 by emailing the editor directly here. David Longhorn runs a PayPal account for subscriptions and will reply with a payment link.

Supernatural Tales also has a webpage.

The 11:17 Enigma

For many years now I have been accidentally looking at the clock at 11:17am, nearly every day, and especially on weekdays. When I mention this to people, they find it quirky and funny and odd. In fact, so do I. This little quirk is even mentioned in a recent interview and in an older blog comment on here.

I always wondered whether it signified that some monumental moment in my life would take place at 11:17am one day, and that I was aware of it on some deeper level of my subconcious.

On Saturday morning, the day before yesterday, my wife gave birth to a beautful baby boy who we have called Oliver Thomas Langridge. We are absolutely over the moon with joy. What a rollercoaster of emotions this has been. We didn't know the sex of the baby before he arrived and my wife Alison and I had discussed many times that I would be the one to tell her what our baby had turned out to be.

Oliver was born at 11:15am, depending on whose clock you look at. I told my wife the sex of the baby, and we agreed his name, at 11:17am, depending on whose clock you look at. Who would have thought such a momentous thing would happen at 11:17am?

Well, actually, I did.

I wonder if my 11:17 thing will stop now that I have become a very proud Dad.

Spireclaw - An easier way to get the free audiobook

One of the "quirks" of my website is that, because it runs in Flash, I was having problems making the MP3 files of the Spireclaw audiobook downloadable. They seemed to only want to run in Quicktime in a browser, and were not right-clickable (to enable people to save it to their computer). This hasn't been much help because I want people to put the chapters onto their iPods and listen on the beach or in the garden.

Anyway, I stumbled across a solution. Go here to see all the files listed directly. Here you can happily right-click and Save As to your heart's content.

I hope you enjoy Spireclaw, and I look forward to hearing what you think of the ending (but please don't post spoilers here!)

Web Fiction Guide

The Web Fiction Guide is a really nicely presented site that lists and reviews online fiction of all types. They approached me through Twitter and I have now received news that my novels "The Daedalus Transfer" and "Spireclaw" are listed with them. Fingers crossed for some extra traffic to my stories. The Web Fiction Guide can be found here.

Now Available - New Schaefer's Integrity Book Cover

Yes it's true. After much waiting, Blackwell Bookshop is selling copies of my novel Schaefer's Integrity with the new cover for the great price of £6.99.

To mark this memorable occasion, I have posted an article on my website that looks at the creative process behind Marvin Herbring's fab illustration, complete with a short interview with the artist, and some interesting and cool preliminary sketches that he put together prior to delivering the final version. You can read the article here.

I always wanted Schaefer's Integrity to be a science fiction novel for people who have never read science fiction. Many non genre readers who have read the story say that it achieves that admirably. So, will this be the book that gets you into sci-fi? I hope so.

3 Arthur C Clarke novels I wish were movies

So science fiction is cool again. Thank God for that. But it's been a few years coming. I think there are a couple of reasons for its resurgence. The primary one being Mr JJ Abrams and his Star Trek reboot, and a very fine reboot it is too. Add to this James Cameron's upcoming Avatar, Peter Jackson dabbling with District 9, Sam Rockwell on the Moon, and Terminator Salvation, and we've got a busy and exciting horizon in the genre.

When Arthur C Clarke passed away last year I was surprised that there wasn't a clamour in Hollywood to greenlight what could potentially be the next "2001" in memory of the visionary author (and I don't mean "2061"). So here's my tuppence-worth. The three Arthur C Clarke books I think should be made into films.

Rendezvous with Rama: Being the first of 4 books, this has scope for a franchise. The story centres around a strange cylindrical spaceship some 40km across that drifts into our solar system. A team is sent to investigate. The film project has been in development hell since the nineties, when Morgan Freeman acquired the rights to make it, got David Fincher on board, and decided to play Commander Norton himself. A release date was set for New Years Day 2000, and I vowed to be at the front of the queue when it was released. Websites were set up, deals struck with Intel for the technology aspect, David Fincher postulated ideas about hand-held cameras in a pure digital environment. The special effects in Independence Day proved that it was possible to represent sheer size on camera (the best example being where a satellite zips past the camera only to crash into the side of a huge mothership). This is the project that had fans salivating, but since Morgan Freeman's recent car accident, Fincher has gone on the record that the project has ground to a halt. Really really sad, for now. But I think this one might still come out, and I think Cameron's Avatar might be the thing that kicks this one back into production. I hope so.


A Fall of Moondust: A great disaster story set on the moon, where dust seas act like liquid water due to reduced gravity. A tourist "boat" gets stuck on a voyage and sinks below the surface. What follows is a race against time to find and rescue the passengers before the air runs out. The resolution to this story is intelligent and believable. A Fall of Moondust would make a great sci-fi movie which I would love to see realised on the big screen. It could be great opportunity to put up some vibrant and exciting lunar landscapes in glorious widescreen.


The Trigger: I worked for a time in Sudan a few years ago. One morning I was at breakfast in our company staff house, when our security officer told me that during the night a young boy was caught by the police trying to break into one of the company cars outside the gates. I was told that he would probably be taken to a station, have the sh*t kicked out of him, and be sent to the south of the country to be handed a gun to fight in the territorial war that rages down there. At the time I was reading The Trigger, and it had a real effect on me. This is a story of a group of scientists who accidentally invent a device that ignites any explosives within a certain radius. This effectively means they can disable weapons and firearms at a distance. They spend the rest of the book trying to come to terms with the implications of such an invention, and so does the rest of the world. From a form of disarmament, to a protector, to a new form of terrorism. This book teaches us that scientific discovery is a gathering snowball crashing down a steep mountain, and sometime's we're only along for the ride. A good political thriller with a lot of cinematic potential.

So let's honour the great man and get one of these made. Is "2001: A Space Odyssey" set to be his only major screen legacy?

The Daedalus Transfer - Art

A big thank you to Jason Chapman at www.scifi-design.com for allowing me to use a couple of his fantasic spaceship illustrations to accompany my free online novel "The Daedalus Transfer". Specifically, an image on the contents page here illustrates the NEO Rig which is used for the construction of the Daedalus, and another image appears in the later chapters of the novel, where the spaceship arrives in orbit around PMC-04.

Jason has also provided a bit of background to his inspiration on the Afterword page, at the end of the novel. Do head over to Jason's website to see some more of his inspiring illustrations.

The Daedalus Transfer can be digested in easily chewable bite-size chunks here, and has been reviewed here.

Now the package is complete, there's no reason not to head over to my website and find out what the Daedalus mission is all about.

Kindle-format my eBook for a signed copy of Schaefer's Integrity

The heading rather says it all. But here's the scoop.

I would like to reformat my two online eBooks, "Spireclaw" and "The Daedalus Transfer" for the Amazon Kindle but my skills at HTML are pretty limited.

So I thought I'd put it out to the wider world. Do you reformat ebooks for Kindle all the time? If not do you know someone who does? If you're up for the task please get in touch via the Contact Me page on my website and I will send you a Word version of either "Spireclaw" or "The Daedalus Transfer".

The first successful reformatter of each eBook will receive a signed copy of my sci-fi novel "Schaefer's Integrity" with the new cover art by Marvin Herbring, sent to them anywhere in the world.

New Schaefer's Integrity cover imminent

After much work, redesigns and repositionings, I am reliably informed by YouWriteOn, publishers of my novel Schaefer's Integrity, that the new cover will be on the book in about 7 days.

I am hoping the image will change on the online bookseller's websites but that remains to be seen. I may end up making those amendments myself if I can.

Anyway. I know a number of you have been holding back on your purchase until the new cover appears, so it looks like the wait will soon be over.

I will post here if anything changes, or indeed if I get any specific indication that the cover has actually changed.

In the meantime, please head over to my Facebook group for the book and join up, if you happen to be a Facebooky kind of person.

Another review of The Darken Loop

Rich Horton over at SFSite has reviewed Jupiter SF 23, and says of my piece The Darken Loop that "...As with many time travel stories, paradoxes are a bit of a problem, not too badly navigated here. Interesting work, on the whole."

Far be it for me to review a review, but here it seems the use of negative words to describe my story positively should still be viewed as a good write up, so I'm grateful for that.

I think I fared well compared to some of the other stories in the magazine.

Hmm, I'm beginning to wonder what he'll make of my upcoming Axiom Few story The Voidant Lance (Jupiter SF January 2010)

The Voidant Lance accepted by Jupiter SF

More great news for my ever-resourceful team of freelance techno-graduates The Axiom Few, who seem to ricochet from one high-tech problem to another. The next installment in their adventures is called The Voidant Lance. Those who were paying attention while reading The Darken Loop (Jupiter SF January 2009) will have seen the seeds of this story planted during Geek's conversations with Brenda.

The Voidant Lance will be appearing in the January 2010 Issue of Jupiter SF. For more about their adventures go here.

If you can't wait that long, check the back issues of Jupiter SF for The Ceres Configuration, or head over to my website to read the free installment in the canon, entitled The Detention Spore.

My First Interview

Allan Mayer is a fellow YouWriteOn published author, responsible for penning the #1 YWO book on Amazon "Tasting the Wind" (and a great book it is too). He is currently building a collection of author interviews over on his website. My interview is the first to be added. Thanks for that Allan. Head over to his website and have a read, and don't forget to order a copy of "Tasting the Wind" while you're at it.

Knowing - A Great Science Fiction Film

I saw "Knowing" last night and was profoundly moved by it. Alex Proyas, the director (Dark City, The Crow, I-Robot) has a stellar visual flair and a clear idea of what makes good science fiction. I love all his films.

What saddens me is that Knowing has been almost universally hated by critics, except for Roger Ebert, who gives it full marks, stating that "Knowing is among the best science-fiction films I've seen -- frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome." Go here to read Eberts review.

I fully agree with him. This is science fiction at it's best, among the best of the decade (Minority Report, AI, I-Robot, T3), and I recommend anyone who has a penchant for grand philosophical questions sees this film.

But other critics rarely give Proyas any slack. Criticisms of I-Robot (that it wasn't true to Asimov's stories) don't wash with me. I think Proyas and his screenwriters distilled Asimov's Robot Laws perfectly, and dealt with the themes and questions that the great writer sought to question. Was it Will Smith that turned people off, just in the same way that Nicolas Cage might put people off seeing Knowing?

I hope people can see beyond that. I understand why big names get cast in these films. When there's big investment in a special effects movie, the ROI has to be there for the studio. If that means a big name, so be it, at least I get a grand vision for my money. The IDEAS transcend any casting quibbles.

I heard a couple talking to each other as we left the cinema last night. She said "Well, that was odd." and he said "Well, it was your idea to see it." I guess the film may not be for everyone. I can imagine that the ending might turn people off in it's execution, but it IS original, and it DOES deal with big concepts, and it doesn't cheat. I applaud it.

The images and ideas of Knowing will haunt me for a long time to come. In particular, a sequence in the film involving an aeroplane, which all takes place in one dizzying, terrifying shot. It is a truly breathtaking bit of cinema. I can't wait for the Blu-Ray.

Advanced English? Moi?

Whilst indulging in that narcisstic habit of Googling myself (sometimes it's the only way of finding websites who have reviewed me...honest...), I stumbled across a blog aimed at teaching people advanced English, linking to my novels, among others, as examples.

I'm not sure of the language it's aimed at, but I don't know whether to be honoured to be included in such a listing, or worried that my cobbled prose might be used as a method to teach people.

Well, I shan't be too worried, it has all helped my site in attaining the lofty Google page-rank of 4.

Revision Oblivion

I bet you're thinking I'm going to blog about a redraft of some story I've got on the go. If only. No, the revision I'm referring to here is actual, proper, study type revision, the likes I haven't indulged in for some 18 years. I'm filling my head with PRINCE2 Project Management methodology for my upcoming Foundation exam next week.

That's why I've not done an awful lot to any of my stories lately, although, in the dead of night last night I did have the twinklings of a sci-fi story set in a skyscraper. But as is usual in the pre-dawn hours, it's more about the mood of a piece than any coherent plot or character elements. It may or may not come to something.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, what's the bloody difference between an End Project Report and a Post Project Review Plan..?

The Inevitability of Twitter

Someone mentioned Twitter to me the other day and then it kept popping up in the periphery, so there's an inevitability about it, like when you think you want to buy something then you end up buying it, even though you hadn't fully decided to buy it when you first thought of it. Hope you're still with me!

So my Twitter page is here and I'd be grateful if you would be so kind as to "follow" me so that I don't feel too lonely in there. I promise to write interesting things on it, rather than just use it to find out what Thomas Dolby is up to.

I'm a Torrent

I've never managed to get Bit-Torrent to work, nor am I all that good at "leet speak", but for those that are even more geeky than me, my novel "The Daedalus Transfer" has been swept into a torrent file at www.h33t.com along with a load of other ebooks. In fact, looking at the esteemed company that I am in (Orson Scott Card, Nick Sagan), I have to speculate about the legitimacy of the enterprise. But my novel is free so the more that read it the better.

In fact, I'm not endorsing that anyone actually downloads this torrent, I'm merely blowing my own trumpet.

The Axiom Few return in The Detention Spore

When a box of syringes mysteriously appears on Davey's kitchen table, the team suspect a Darken Loop is in play. But how does it connect to the letter Geek receives from his father in prison, warning of a virus outbreak inside it's walls?

The events in "The Detention Spore" take place six months after "The Darken Loop", and although there are references to the other stories in the Axiom Few canon, each works as a standalone piece.

Click here to go to the Axiom Few page on my website, where "The Detention Spore" is available to read for free.

Schaefer's Integrity - New wraparound cover coming soon

The awesome concept image that Marvin Herbring has produced is well on it's way to becoming the new replacement wraparound cover for my novel Schaefer's Integrity. I'm really excited about this as the image really brings the book to life. We should see it in the next couple of months.

Also, in anticipation of this I have created a Facebook group for the book, so do head over there and join up if you can.

Top 5 Sci-Fi Albums

I associate science-fiction with music quite a lot and, perhaps like other writers, use music as a strong influence when dreaming up thoughts of space and time. I wanted to list for you the top 5 records that influence me. In no particular order:

Vangelis - Direct: This album features the synthesizer sound that he used to such great effect in the compositions that formed the Blade Runner soundtrack, and although that soundtrack is excellent, the sounds in Direct are newer (1988) and are not tied to Ridley Scott's images, allowing the mind to wander in other directions. With track names like Intergalactic Radio Station, The Motion of Stars and First Approach, it really seems like Vangelis had his sci-fi cap on while sitting at the keyboard.

BT - Movement in Still Life: When BT started getting really granular with his music, splicing it and chopping it around and doing genuinely amazing things with sound, it felt like the future of dance music had arrived. With a pair of great headphones on, this album feels like you've plugged your head into a computer and you're listening to every single piece of data flying across the bus. After the hip-hoppy beginning it elevates to the stars and the last track, Satellites, is literally like being in orbit, complete with astronaut radio talk. A beautiful song. An inspiring album. Awesome.



Genesis - Calling All Stations: A lot of people slagged this album off but I really thought it worked, and Ray Wilson's at times tortured voice sounds like a man who's adrift in space (or at sea?) looking for comfort, or something he can tether himself too. The title track embodies this, and it's quite a dark album in places. Great catchy sci-fi songs with soaring instrumentals and some great drumming, especially on One Man's Fool.


Sasha - airdrawndagger: A soundscape unlike anything you'll have ever heard before, but not in an obcsure Tangerine Dreamy mid-seventies experimental, atonal type way. Sasha has drawn from those heady influences but has given rhythmic character to his sounds, shape even. The tunes take a little while to emerge but by then they're under your skin. More inspiring synth work that simply transports you off the planet.

Jean-Michel Jarre - Waiting for Cousteau: My friends and I used to lie on the grass in the garden at Selsey Bill on the south coast of England, looking up at the stars (or down, now that is an idea that can mess with your head!) while the beautiful 46 minute long title-track played. It has a floaty, watery, spaced out feel that is truly meditative. It complemented the stunning vista so well. That track works nicely as an accompaniment to writing too, as it's so unintrusive.

So there you have it. There were a few I left off in favour of these, but these are the holy grail in my eyes. If you're reading this I would really love for you to make suggestions of inspiring sci-fi music that transports you to that other place, as new music is always great to discover.

Thanks for reading.

More reviews of The Darken Loop

The February issues of SFrevu and SFCrowsnest have appeared online with reviews of Jupiter SF 23 and I'm pleased to say that the reviews of "The Darken Loop" have been universally good. Thanks guys.

Sam Tomaino at SFRevu calls it "... a nicely told story of alternate realities". Rod MacDonald at SFCrowsnest pays the story more extensive praise. He calls it "...exciting..." and says it's "An excellent story, one which has plenty of scope for development into other forms of media."

And for those who are interested, the Axiom Few do have a number of new adventures in the pipeline.

To read the full reviews, click the links above.