The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

He was later a full-time writer and a part-time lecturer at several universities for classes concerning subjects such as creative writing.

This series is also related to, though not always entirely consistent with, the 8 collections and 5 novels subtitled "Tales of the Biotech Revolution", see below.

In the introduction to his 2007 collection, The Tree of Life and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution, Stableford describes this series as "tracking the potential effects of possible developments in biotechnology on the evolution of global society.

"The broad sweep of this future history envisages a large-scale economic and ecological collapse in the 21st-century brought about by global warming and other factors, followed by the emergence of a global society designed to accommodate human longevity (although that is not necessarily obvious in stories set in advance of the Crash)."