When asked directly for a suggested reading order, the author wrote: "I hope that all the books and indeed the stories can be read stand-alone. I'm not a great fan of books that end with cliff-hangers. So you could go in anywhere. One way would be to start with "Vacuum Diagrams", a collection that sets out the overall story of the universe. Then "Timelike Infinity" and "Ring" which tell the story of Michael Poole, then "Raft" and "Flux" which are really incidents against the wider background, and finally "Destiny's Children"."