Huw Langridge

The Voidant Lance

A good point about 'Jupiter' is that you often get a series of stories running through the magazine, the 'Roadrunner' stories coming to mind. This issue sees the welcome return of The Axiom Few in a story called 'The Voidant Lance' written by Huw Langridge. Come on, Channel 4, there's a series waiting to be made here.

The setting is London in the year 2057. Archer, Geek and the gang discover that an alien device is on its way to crash into the Earth resulting in an apocalypse which would devastate the planet and cause billions of deaths. They have a plan which involves shifting everyone on Earth a little bit into the future but Archer's son, Lloyd, arrives on the scene and tries to stop them. Quite badly disfigured by genetic mishaps, the boy has a warning to deliver. Curiously, the arrival of a son he did not know he had helps Archer to come to terms with the problems he has with his own father.

Delving into the plot in greater detail would be a spoiler. Take it from me, this is an electric story and to the editor, make sure you get more of the Axiom Few in the future!  - Rod MacDonald, SF Crowsnest

"The Voidant Lance" by Huw Langridge is part of a series of stories about the Axiom Few, men who deal with perils to the planet. The leader of the group, Archer is alerted by his estranged father, Goddard, of an object headed toward Earth by a race called the Voidant. Archer, with the help of his colleagues, Geek and Davey, must find a way to save Earth from a catastrophic collision. But someone else shows up to advise them and their plans change. We are told that the next installment for the Axiom Few is at the author's website, and it should be well worth checking out if the next story is as good as this one. - Sam Tomaino, SFRevu

The Ceres Configuration

Huw Langridge provides us with The Ceres Configuration. A good old fashioned (yet high-tech) tale of approaching apocalypse, this story served to remind me just what unpretentious science fiction can do when written by someone who clearly relishes every word. - Adrian Fry - Whispers of Wickedness

The Darken Loop

And from Janus, we move to the London of 2052 with "The Darken Loop" by Huw Langridge. The story starts with a very mundane setting of a young woman arriving with a train on the London Waterloo station and going to a job interview (and I actually smiled at it - the second part of last week, I was catching a train at the very same station every morning) and decides to make a detour and get herself a coffee. And with this introduction, we head up for the real story - a conscious AI, time travel (in a way) and parallel worlds. Add to this love and betrayal and it starts to shape up. Beautifully crafted, all the way to the end which repeats the beginning... or does it? - Annieworld, Random Thoughts

Huw Langridge's "The Darken Loop" begins in 2052 with a woman deciding to buy a cup of coffee. The story then focuses on a man called Geek who receives a message directly into his brain. It seems to be coming from a parallel universe and wants Geek to do an important job. This was a nicely told story of alternate realities. - Sam Tomaino, SFRevu

'The Darken Loop' by Huw Langridge is an exciting story of multi-dimensions and an entity from the future. The story begins innocuously enough with the girl called Louise going for an interview some 40 years in our future but not having enough money to buy a cup of coffee. Schrödinger's cat scenario...whether or not she has a cup of coffee affects the long-term future of not just one universe but a multitude of them. It also determines if she lives or dies.

Bring into this The Axiom Few, a small band of freelance techno graduates. The brains of the operation, a guy called Geek, is in communication with this entity from the future, an entity anthropic in nature, which pulls the past towards it and looks after humanity in the multitude of realities. Anyway, Geek has invented goggles which can look round corners in a dimensional sort of way. Their task is to get a Costa coffee voucher to Louise through a rip in time to save her and the future which lies ahead but this is complicated by the fact that she was the girl-friend of two members of the group and looking into the past isn't always a good idea.

An excellent story, one which has plenty of scope for development into other forms of media. This was a short story but the characterisation is good and it's possible to see a novel or even a radio or TV series featuring The Axiom Few. - Rod MacDonald, SF Crowsnest

In Huw Langridge's "The Darken Loop" a group of freelance scientists is urged by an AI to make use of an unexpected means of a sort of time travel to save the girlfriend of one of them. As with many time travel stories, paradoxes are a bit of a problem, not too badly navigated here. Interesting work, on the whole. - Rich Horton, The SF Site

Spireclaw

Well Written Weird Mystery 4/5

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.

A tone of tension and foreboding is established, but as the story progresses it’s not quite as scary as I expected it to be. Kieran goes about his mundane day and encounters some odd, but apparently trivial, mysteries, that, although he treats them lightly, he nevertheless seems compelled to investigate. He also receives some upsetting (and coincidental) news about the death of an old friend. He and the friend’s bereaved girlfriend drown their sorrows together and soon she is along for the ride as the pair follow up weird clues on a quest they superficially treat as a lark and a distraction, but they can’t seem to stop! Meanwhile a parallel story of dark events during World War II (with historical basis) is interspersed into the narrative.

The main story takes place in London and surrounding communities and has a vivid sense of place. Real landmarks are used and the details of damp weather, speech patterns, lifestyle details of urban UK lower middle class in (I think) the 80s to 90s – will have you nodding if you have been there or giving you a taste of it if you have not.

At 29 chapters I had expected to divide up this reading over several sessions but I read it all in one evening – it was that enthralling and went quickly.

The first time I got to the ending I was so upset I cried out NO! in protest. Then I realized I had inadvertedly missed a big chunk of the previous chapter. The scroll bar to the left of the text is very thin (at least on my screen) and this sometimes made it tricky to tell when I’d reached the bottom of a chapter – watch out for that! Once I realized what had happened and read the omitted text I felt more satisfied that the end had tied up the plot themes, although I do still have some problem with it. I can’t discuss details without creating a spoiler, but I will just say the phrase "one of these things is not like the others" comes to mind. It may be hard to take, however, don’t worry, you will find out what "Spireclaw" means and more.

If you’d like to read a nicely crafted modern dark (subtly) supernatural mystery set in London, here’s your book. - Fiona Gregory, Web Fiction Guide

I was hooked by Spireclaw and I read it in one sitting, as I tend to do when something really grabs me. It has just the right blend of mystery, the occult and drama to keep one turning the pages. A writer usually has to avoid coincidences like the plague, but it is something essential to the plot in Spireclaw and it is spellbinding the way that the coincidences build up to form a tangled web of intrigue that has the reader wondering whats going to happen next. The narrative is pacey and at times I was reminded of the novels of Dan Brown when the hero is on a quest for the answers, going from one nugget of information to the next leading to a conclusion that is shocking, but in a sense is based on something so deep and hidden in the human psyche. A love story that transcends time, Spireclaw left me wanting more. Cracking stuff. - Rupert C, Zambia

I just finished reading Spireclaw. It really held my suspense and I thought it was a terrific book! ... I found out about online books a couple months ago and I've been reading lots of books. Spireclaw is the best one I've read so far! - Linda M, Dallas TX

8 out of 10 - Bookmark Online Reads

The Daedalus Transfer

Huw Langridge is obviously a technology freak and has grounded this e-novel, The Daedalus Transfer in fact. The technological aspects and the human factors concerned with space travel are dealt with with surprising realism. Huw has done his homework. Entertaining and highly complex, the novel moves from the real to the surreal and it is a fascinating look at how space travel might be in the not too distant future. The characters are believable and the claustrophobic confines of the ship give rise to interesting interplay, especially as scientists with rational minds struggle to rationalize the seemingly impossible turns of events. This is a great novel for lovers of sci-fi and the themes dealt with in the novel will have the reader not only wondering about the future of mankinds exploration of the cosmos, but also questioning the realities of time and space itself. - Rupert C, Zambia

Wind Farm

"A good read", "Chromatic and Strong" - Gary Fry, Fusing Horizons