Sometime back in 2011 or ’12, I read Ender’s Game for the first time. I discovered that it and its sequels were part of a larger collection of stories called ‘The Enderverse’ a portmanteau of the name of the main character “Ender” and “Universe.” It was the first time I noticed that authors who created multiple works of fiction inside a single narrative world, often came up with some clever name for said narrative world. These authors, or their publishers, or editors, or whoever it is who actually does this job, have given these fictional universe titles like: The MCU, The Mignolaverse, The Revelation Space Universe, Middle Earth, Known Space, the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Emberverse.
I decided that since many of my short stories and novels take place in a single fictional reality, I too needed a catchy name for my mythos. I decided to call it the Aptaverse, (stylized as APTA/verse.) The origin of this name is deeply connected to some of the more interesting aspects of the mythology behind my stories. Unfortunately, explaining the innate awesomeness of the name requires spoiling several key plot points from Under the Sun, the first APTA/verse Novel.
However, since the number one question I have gotten from friends and family is, “What the heck is an APTA?” I will try to explain without delving too deeply into spoilers. The APTA/verse is a multiverse with many branching permutations and possibilities. It is a fragmented reality that is slightly at odds with the universe as we know it. In most of those permutations, there is an organization dedicated to the protection of reality, called HASMAT.
But since HASMAT Universe sounds like the title of a Discovery Channel Most Dangerous Jobs spinoff; I decided that there was a better choice for the unifying thread that connects my stories. Inside HASMAT is another department, the Agency for the Prevention of Temporal Anomalies, more commonly referred to as APTA.
I do not claim that it is a great name. But when your web designer says he needs a domain name immediately… you work with what you have, and with what's available. At least now, the origin of the APTA/verse name should be less cryptic than it was when you first clicked on www.aptaverse.com.