I wrote the stories before the novel. I used the Shaper/Mechanist short stories as a method of exploration, a way to creep methodically into the burgeoning world of the book. First came "Swarm," which involves two characters only, and is set light-years away from the eventual center of the action. Next I wrote "Spider Rose," set on the fringes of the solar system, and the fringes of Schismatric society. After that came "Cicada Queen," which thundered headlong into a major Shaper/Mechanist city and examined their society as it boiled like a technocrazed anthill. "Sunken Gardens" was set late in my future-history, a framing work. The experimental "Twenty Evocations" was my final word on the subject. It was a dry-run for the forthcoming novel, and with that effort, I was carrying my "crammed-prose" technique as far as it would go.