 "Peculiar Lives" is written as if by Erik Clevedon, who is based on the real-life author Olaf Stapledon.The story draws particularly from Stapledon's novels "Last and First Men" (1930), "Last Men in London" (1932), "Odd John" (1935) and "Sirius" (1944).The book also features the characters of Gideon Beech, a fictionalised George Bernard Shaw, and (briefly) John Cleavis, a fictionalised C. S. Lewis character originally created by Paul Magrs.