I never wanted to write a proper 'series', mainly because I fucking hate finishing a book only to discover it doesn't have an actual ending and I have to buy a sequel to find out what happens next. That's a shitty cheap trick for any author to pull, especially when after six books there's still no sign of a conclusion. Yeah, Pierce Brown, looking at you...
That said, I do appreciate the joy of a world that can host multiple stories and characters. Therefore everything I write is (and always will be) set in the same world, at different points in the timeline. As a result, there are a few 'easter egg' references across the stories for readers to identify.
Many of the links are obvious and world-related, with common events and technology woven through each story. So there are common events like Stop Day, or the Winter, referenced by characters. You might also see how technology develops over time, like emotional induction beginning with the crude helmet in Segmentation Fault in 2041, through the inducer nets of Safe State in 2058, to the ultramesh of Calibration Run in 2062. Or the storybirds of Safe State becoming storybees by the time of Calibration Run. Most of those are easy enough to pick up.
However, some of the links - particularly the character related ones - can be a little more obscure, so I thought I'd try to list them all here for reference.
Warning: MAJOR spoilers for ALL the stories, including their endings, are found below. I'm providing this page as a fun resource for people who have already read them to see if they spotted all the links.
Safe State / Segmentation Fault
- The first epigraph in Safe State is credited to Morgan Outhwaite. After Segmentation Fault, Morgan went on to become a household name as an online BBC children's presenter and, latterly, a historian.
- When Jas is in the Realmifyr virtuality, she references 'Morgan the Morphologist' and the BBC online learning virtualities. Through these, it was Morgan's avatar who effectively taught Jas and her friends to read.
- When Blanco is trying to explain the dangers of emotional induction to Jas, he reveals that he knew Morgan's dad, who had once called on him to rescue Morgan's girlfriend from her abusive father. Blanco goes on to reveal that he 'took the father out of the equation' and the girlfriend (not named, but it is Kayla) subsequently went through therapy and recovered. This is the 'happy ending' for Segmentation Fault which the published version did not include.
Safe State / No Good Deed
- When Blanco tells Jas how he discovered the Scarabs' geofencing failsafe, he refers to the encryption being backdoored by his 'old mentor' Aron Lyle. Blanco joined Thorne and Lyle shortly after the events of No Good Deed.
- The safehouse in Bury St Edmunds that Blanco suggests they go to is owned by 'Mr Thorne' who is, of course, Bruce Thorne.
Calibration Run / Safe State
- The Calibration Run prologue (set before the events of Safe State) takes place on the Farm, where Jas was kept during the Winter, and features Baker and Doctor Gresham.
- In Calibration Run, Rubis and Melda discuss Collapse Day, which is a reference to the events in the Safe State epilogue. Melda's patron was one of the neumans at the Barnes Festival of Living Literature. There is a hint as to their fate - 'disappeared off to Louth and died of radiation poisoning'.
- In Safe State, Jas mentions a paraplegic girl being kept in the next pen to her on the Farm. This is the girl featured in the Calibration Run prologue. She is never named.
- In Safe State, when Jas connects to Jennesse Mwangi's Pick Me stream, the child who she sees humiliated in the South Mimms hostel is Jessie McNeal. DI Jordan, a.k.a. Jessie's mother, is therefore also present in the Safe State scene.
Calibration Run / No Good Deed
- In Calibration Run, the story told by Jordan's grandfather and the subsequent recreation of the scene in the virtuality, is a replica of Michael Williams' gruesome death at the hands of Bruce Thorne in No Good Deed.