In the Company Wars Chronicles I have a character called Alan P. Ellis. Alan is portrayed as an arrogant and self-important writer, who is the author of a series of books about Jet Black. The idea was to depict Jet Black as a kind of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers; the kind of over the top character that gets into fanciful and implausible situations. But as anyone who writes will know our characters sometimes refuse to act the way we intended them to, and it occurred to me long after I had introduced Alan that by making Jet into a far-fetched character gave me the opportunity to use a few what if situations I had at the back of my mind without taking the stories too seriously. Jet may have started as a joke, but it seems Alan has had the last laugh.