Acknowledgments

I’m very grateful to the many people who have given me their time, their knowledge, and their advice (sometimes all three) for Transition and for Starfarers before it. Both novels benefited from the intelligent readings and the information, on everything from genetic technology to cosmic string, that my friends offered so generously. Thanks to Kristi Austin, geneticist Dr. John H. Chalmers (who also helped me keep my sanity in graduate school, all those years ago), Dr. John Cramer, Jane Hawkins, Marilyn Holt, Orca researcher Jeff Jacobsen, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kate Schaefer, Carol Severance, Jon Singer (I know him too), Sandra M. Smith, classical archaeologist and fellow writer Irene Wanner, and of course the Marmots: Steven Bryan Bieler and Nancy T. Reynolds and Deborah Wessell.

The background of the campus of Starfarer depends heavily on the work of Gerard K. O’Neill and the Space Studies Institute.

Any errors and infelicities that remain are my own responsibility.