Linked Stories

Several of my stories are set against the same backgrounds, though it’s not always obvious that they do. I never intended to do that, although there is a certain appeal in returning to a familiar setting.


The orbital habitat Astropolis is the setting for:

The Blind Collaborators - Aphelion
Travel by Numbers – Nature
Up to my Neck in it – Hypersonic Tales
Three AM – Golden Visions (Forthcoming)


The European Hadron Laboratory, based loosely on CERN, is the setting or background for:

Absolute Zero - Ennea
Fluctuations – Bewildering Stories
Turning Over a New Leaf – Aphelion

Turning Over a New Leaf was also set in Dan Hollifield’s Mare Inebrium universe, for Aphelion, along with Ten Years at the Bar.


My abandoned novel Galaxy’s Game, which sadly will never see the light of day, also shares a background with some of my stories, and obscure references to some of them were built into the storyline. I tried to resuscitate Galaxy’s Game recently, but it needs too much work to get it up to scratch. At least I know my writing has improved over the past five years. The stories that share it’s background are:

A Feast of Eyes – Static Movement
Blue Men - Friday Flash Fiction
The Alliterati – Illuminations


Finally, Rufus Balikind, the Galaxy’s greatest big-game hunter appears in three stories:

Shooting Stars – Big Pulp (Forthcoming)
Now You See Me - Friday Flash Fiction
Stone Quarry - Friday Flash Fiction

The latter is also a sequel to Delayed Reaction – Illuminations, to be reprinted in Cat Tales.


My other 54 stories have nothing in common.