A Message to the Reader

Before his death in 1983 after a long illness, Mack Reynolds had taken several novels to first-draft stage and then, perhaps driven by a sense of mortal urgency, gone on to the next. When it became clear that Mack would be unable to bring them to completion, I, with Mack’s and later his estate’s approval, commissioned Dean Ing to take the entire group to a fully polished state. Dean’s purpose has not been to collaborate posthumously, but to finish them exactly as Mack Reynolds writing at the utter top of his form would have done.

We believe that Dean has succeeded to an almost uncanny degree. For any writer, and particularly one of Ing’s stature, to so subordinate his own authorial personality is a remarkable achievement.

Requiescat in pacem, Mack.

—Jim Baen

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I liked Mack; I liked the way he lived; and I liked his tequila. That’s why…

—Dean Ing