Satima Flavell Neist contacted me a couple of days ago to discuss Saturn Returns in relation to an article she was working on for the Specusphere ("Write a Review Worth Reading", online here). We discussed some of the themes in the novel and the way I'd encoded them in the name of the main character. These particular details are now revealed for all to see at the link above (just scroll down a bit).

I assume that every writer plays these kind of extracurricular games with their stories. Would that be fair to say?

Anyway, all my books have sneaky details woven into the larger fabric, not all of them so profound, from giving Tripod a walk-on role in a Star Wars novel to slagging off people who've pissed me off in the past--in highly disguised forms, of course.

Saturn Returns is no different. There's "Cat's Arse", which I'm sure most people have guessed has something to do with our beloved catsparx (never ever, however, did I consider calling the series "Arstropolis"). There's Bianca Biancotti, no actual relation to deborahb but inspired by the same. Cat gets another throwaway mention thanks to a projectile rifle called "Sparks", and in fact every named weapon refers either to people and places in my life, or to the various Gothic authors whose work I've nicked for quotes and occasional dialogue.

It goes on. Hyperabad is obviously a typo away from Hyderabad. The ruined liner Deodati is a nod to Mary Shelley. The name of the "Aldobrand Cipher" comes from Robert Maturin's play "The Castle of St Aldobrand".

Maturin, in fact, appears several times in this book and Cenotaxis, the linking novella coming out from MonkeyBrain Books next month. The founder of the First Church of the Return is called "Mother Turin", which can be abbreviated to "Ma Turin". Another play, "Fredolfo", became a place-name, as did his great-uncle, Oscar Wilde. His pseudonym, Dennis Jasper Murphy, gave me the name of the main character of Cenotaxis. "Balzac beamers" are named after Honore de Balzac, who wrote a sequel to Maturin's classic Melmoth the Wanderer in 1835.

Friend and editor Lou Anders also gets two nods, once thanks to his surname (the proto-Fort Ampersand took its name from an anagram of its primary personality, Pam Anders) and his home town, which plays a major role Cenotaxis.

Some of the references are more obvious than others. The next book in the series, Earth Ascendant, moves away from Maturin to another famous Gothic writer, from whom I've lifted such creations as Bostonian sidearms, the Metzengerstein Nebula, Hansfaall base on the dark side of the moon, a colony called Al-A'raaf and another called Ulalune, conspiracy theorist from Tau Ceti called Reynolds and the mythical novel Zaknythos, by Henre Le Rennet and Edgar A. Perry.

I'm sure that most readers don't know that I'm having a whale of time like this behind the pages, and I'm sure that it doesn't add much, really, to the finished work. But to anyone who does go looking, I hope that details like this will surprise and delight them. Such eager readers--not to mention friends with legendary arses--deserve to be rewarded.