Short Stories
I write the occasional short story. Usually daft Sci-Fi type stories. You can download them for free here.
Tobias Trench likes neat routines, naval history, and an uncluttered iPhone. What he does not like is local council parking bureaucracy—or his mobile suddenly speaking to him in a patronising tone.
When an interstellar AI called PLOD commandeers his device to announce the imminent arrival of a starship dead set on draining the local seawater for fuel, Tobias and his razor-sharp library colleague, Cassie, are thrust into first contact. It turns out saving the planet from ecological catastrophe and solving a galactic energy crisis is surprisingly straightforward; the real challenge is dealing with the town’s overzealous parking wardens.
In the Dorset seaside town of Bogshire, septuagenarian tinkerer Reg Crumplethwaite spends his days in his "design centre" (which his long-suffering wife, Noreen, insists is just a shed) inventing contraptions that solve problems nobody had while creating three new ones.
But when Reg decides to build a robot helper using mail-order parts, dodgy improvisations, and an old mobility scooter, his DIY robotics project catches the attention of a nearby celestial neighbour. Soon, Reg and Noreen find themselves hosting a pair of visitors from Proxima Centauri b who are in desperate need of mechanical repairs, intergalactic broadcasting advice, and—above all else—a proper batch of homemade biscuits.
In 1976, an alien commander swapped a cooling fan for a 1970s Goblin Teasmade, convinced that the stubborn physics of a British morning routine held the secret to faster-than-light travel. Fifty years later, a catastrophic malfunction strands a Zaponian star-clipper in deep space, sending senior engineer Zorvax hurtling to a damp Dorset village to recover the missing part. Caught between an unflappable local handyman, an unyielding Parish Council leader, and an old farmer using alien technology to warm his pasties, Zorvax must navigate the peculiarities of English pub diplomacy to prevent an intergalactic mayonnaise-fusion catastrophe.