I’ve just begun reading the Ecolitan novels, and I notice that you have used the same system names as in The Hammer of Darkness: Fuard, Halston, etc. Do you consider all of these novels to be in the same timeline/universe? If so, what is the chronology?

In writing my science fiction, I’ve always considered the different “series”/books as possible varying futures from the present in which we live, or, as in the case of the “Ghost” books, an alternate present. That’s why certain names recur in various books. The Ecolitan books are set in a future somewhat different from The Hammer of Darkness, and there’s no real connection except the past.