Alert readers have spotted that many of my short stories appear to be set against a common background. To clarify matters, I have prepared this list, which groups together the linked stories in “chronological” order, according to the sequence of events they describe. 

The Tanguy Stories

These stories are set against the same background, although the time period between the first and the last is around five billion years. Reading them in order, you will notice that the same characters and organisations crop up repeatedly throughout, especially the shady Tanguy Corporation.

I have divided the list into three thematic ”phases”. The stories in Phase One are set between ten and a hundred years hence and primarily deal with the emergence of artificial intelligence and the deterioration of the Earth’s climate; the stories in Phase Two occur roughly a hundred to three hundred years after that, as mankind expands to other star systems; and the stories in Phase Three take place at the effective end of the habitable Universe, several billion years into the future. 

Phase One:

1. Laptop Jack
2. Ack-Ack Macaque
3. Distant Galaxies Colliding
4. A Necklace of Ivy
5. Falling Apart
6. Flotsam
7. Hot Rain
8. Morning Star
9. The Last Reef

Phase Two:

1. Silversands (novel)
2. Six Lights off Green Scar
3. Memory Dust

Phase Three:

1. The Redoubt
2. Sunsets and Hamburgers

Standalone Stories

The following stories do not currently form part of a larger sequence:

1. Cat In A Box
2. Arches
3. What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done?
4. Pod Dreams of Tuckertown

Tags: Ack-Ack Macaque • Flotsam • Future history • Memory Dust • Short Story • Silversands • The Last Reef