Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank:

Gerard K. O’Neill, author of The High Frontier, which initiated the O’Neill space colony concept, and the Space Studies Institute, which has continued research of the concept; Stewart Brand, who promoted the idea in Space Colonies, which inspired this novel; T.A. Heppenheimer, who refined things further in Colonies in Space and Toward Distant Suns; and Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, whose American Indian Myths and Legends suggested the character of Coyote (as freely extrapolated here). All these books were invaluable references and are recommended as further reading.

Further appreciation is due to Michael Warshaw, Steve Jones D’Agostino, Koji Mukai, Doug Long, Bob Liddil, Terry Kepner, Frank and Joyce Jacobs, and Robert Mendel for various favors rendered. My wife, Linda, listened to my ideas, fetched beer and pizza, and refused to let me discard this book when I thought about writing something else. Many thanks, also, to Ginjer Buchanan, Susan Allison, and Martha Millard.

In particular, I wish to thank the residents of Lukachukai, Arizona, in the Navajo reservation. Among them, I am especially grateful to the Reverend Fred Harvey of the Native American Church, and his family. Ten years ago, long before this book was ever conceived, I spent several days as a house guest of the Harvey family and as a visitor to Lukachukai. My observations of the Navajo way of life went into a journal; I dug it out of a file cabinet and used it as a primary reference in the research of this work. I never heard from Fred again, but that experience has been pivotal to this work. Any mistakes that I may have made concerning the Navajo people and culture are my own; anything I got right was because Fred, his family, and friends were good hosts and teachers.

—Rindge, New Hampshire;

January, 1988 – April, 1989