Robert J. Sawyer - Humans

For anthropological and paleontological advice, I thank Milford H. Wolpoff, Ph.D., University of Michigan; Ian Tattersall, Ph.D., and Gary J. Sawyer (no relation), both of the American Museum of Natural History; Philip Lieberman, Ph.D., Brown University; Michael K. Brett-Surman, Ph.D., and Rick Potts, Ph.D., both of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; Robin Ridington, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia; and the various experts listed in the Acknowledgments to my previous book, Hominids.

Special thanks to Art McDonald, Ph.D., Director, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute, and J. Duncan Hepburn, Ph.D., site manager, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Thanks, too, to Sudbury resident Kris Holland, who went over the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb.

Huge thanks to my lovely wife, Carolyn Clink; my editor, David G. Hartwell, and his associate, Moshe Feder; my agent, Ralph Vicinanza, and his associates, Christopher Lotts and Vince Gerardis; Tom Doherty, Linda Quinton, Jennifer Marcus, Jennifer Hunt, and everyone else at Tor Books; Harold and Sylvia Fenn, Robert Howard, Heidi Winter, Melissa Cameron, David Leonard, and everyone else at H. B. Fenn and Company; and my colleagues, Terence M. Green, Andrew Weiner, and Robert Charles Wilson.

Special thanks to Byron R. Tetrick, whose invitation to contribute to his landmark 2002 anthology, In the Shadow of the Wall: Vietnam Stories That Might Have Been (Cumberland House), led to me focusing my thoughts on several key issues; much of Chapter 22, in a different form, first appeared in that anthology.

Beta testers for this novel were the always insightful Ted Bleaney, Michael A. Burstein, David Livingstone Clink, Marcel Gagn, Richard Gotlib, Peter Halasz, Howard Miller, Dr. Ariel Reich, Alan B. Sawyer, and Sally Tomasevic, and I was fortunate enough to be working again with the copyediting team of Bob and Sara Schwager.

Parts of this book were written at John A. Sawyers vacation home on Canandaigua Lakethanks, Dad! Thanks, also, to Nicholas A. DiChario, my host on frequent visits to Rochester, New York, where some of this novel is set.

York University, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and the Creighton Mine all really exist. However, all the characters in this novel are entirely the product of my imagination. They are not meant to bear any resemblance to the actual people who hold or have held positions with these or any other organizations.

If only there were evil people somewhere

insidiously committing evil deeds and it were

necessary only to separate them from the rest

of us and destroy them. But the line

dividing good and evil cuts through the heart

of every human being. And who is willing to

destroy a piece of his own heart?

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN