Diemwnt is Welsh for diamond, of course. Chrístõ says so at one point. The original name of the planet is Demantur, which is Icelandic for Diamond. Gyémántot is Hungarian, Timantin is Finnish. is Macedonian. I am not that good at languages. I used Google translator to find as many different and varied words as possible. allowed me to put in that humorous comment about the stenographers refusing to accept words that weren’t on a standard keyboard. There were quite a few other interesting words from around the world, but those were my favourites.

A story in which Adano-Ambrado, Gallifrey and Earth might stand on the brink of war with each other was in my mind for a while. I briefly mentioned the possibility in the story ‘The Madness of Werrun Koe’ when a Gallifreyan had committed crimes within the jurisdiction of Adano-Ambrado and the Earth Federation. Now it was revived as a very real possibility.

One reader pointed out that the disputed planet was very much like the island of Leshp in the Terry Pratchett Discworld novel Jingo, in that it was the unwitting cause of a war. This is true, and it is also true that I have often been inspired by Pratchett, but in this case it was completely coincidental. Leshp, of course, rose up from the sea and Diemwnt emerged from an ion field. There is certainly a similarity. But this time, no deliberate homage.

Chrístõ is a little young to be the moderator of such an important series of negotiations, but it was what I wanted him to do. He had to be the one upon whom the weight of responsibility fell. Three species he cared deeply about would tear themselves apart and he had to stop it.

The people of Diamwnt were inspired by the pictures that appeared in all the newspapers when I was writing these stories of Nele Azevedo’s ice sculptures that slowly melted in Berlin to draw attention to melting ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica. I really wanted to include them in a story, but I knew they wouldn’t make a whole story on their own.

The reference to Cú Chulainn charioteer is a simple form of what are very detailed and complex stories from Irish mythology. It is a bit of a distraction, since Cal never really gets to be the ‘charioteer’ very much. He instead spends most of the subsequent story as a victim of the bomb blast, while Chrístõ solves the mystery with Penne and Hext. But I may return to the metaphor at a later time. Cal is going to be Chrístõ’s companion for a little while to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingo_(novel)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1210783/Melting-men-Thousand-ice-sculptures-left-thaw-sun-highlight-climate-change-Arctic.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%BA_Chulainn