All-Patron Reward: Less-Obvious References 4

People seem to enjoy these little peeks behind the curtain, so let's keep going! 

1) In Paradigms Lost, Jason Wood goes by the handle of "Mentor of Arisia" when online. This is of course a reference to the Lensman series by Doc Smith, which everyone knows is one of my biggest inspirations. However, as the interactions Jason has online are patterned in some ways on my own experience, so his handle is also a reflection of the fact that my very first online handle was Kimball Kinnison, the main character of the Lensman series.

2)  The transforming demon-monster people in the section of Paradigms Lost titled "Viewed in a Harsh Light" were a direct reference to the similar creatures in the anime/manga series The Guyver.

3) In Diamonds Are Forever, Clint Slade discusses some of the work he and Jodi have been involved with, particularly in signal processing to extract quiet signals from noise; he specifically mentions one in which he had to be able to detect and isolate human whispers at over three hundred yards. This is a direct reference to my own work at my day job, where we had a project that did exactly that.  Similarly, A.J. Baker's "faerie dust" is an extrapolation of the intelligent sensor nodes I've worked on, as was DuQuesne's "old technology" wireless node relay that he used in the original Grand Central Arena.

4) Most of the AISages seen in Grand Central Arena are references to something. As some examples, Simon's AISage Mio is a reference to Japanese singer Mio, who performed the opening themes to a number of 1980s anime. Gabrielle's Vincent is Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII; DuQuesne's Isaac is of course Isaac Asimov; Saul Maginot's AISage Elizabeth is Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. 

5) In the Balanced Sword trilogy, a lot of gods are mentioned, some once, some frequently.  Some of these are original (Terian, Chromaias), others are obvious derivations of real-world pantheons (Athena), and so on. A few, however, are in-jokes. The Three Beards are described as gods of good whose symbol is a double lightning bolt; this is a reference to the1980s videos of the  band ZZ Top, a trio consisting of two men with impressive beards...and a third whose NAME was "Beard". In a similar musical theme, "The Triad" is a pantheon of three gods of good whose names are Lyric, Lifeson, and The Speaker -- a reference to Rush, whose Neil Peart almost always wrote the lyrics for their songs, the guitarist Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee, who was almost exclusively the vocalist.