This one is for Feldspar.
I’d never have written at all if it wasn’t for my first grade language teacher, DOSROX. Thanks for the encouragement, and I’ve never forgotten you and the hours a very bright AI devoted to a very young impatient human.
Thanks to my first readers Goneril Joseph, Cleopatra Smith, Paul Mbele, !Quart, Adera’ta and Gussie Gillibrand. You’re the best writer’s group in the universe, guys!
Extra thanks to Go for mending my broken fliv and rescuing the lost chapter I thought was gone forever into positronic oblivion, Clo for enlivening several boring futtle transits with her presence, Po for hugs, coffee, and moa steaks at Martian dawn and !Quo for explaining details about a!hanthi history I don’t expect anyone ever asked zir before.
Pascal Frova helped me with research both on Mars and in his native atmosphere on Quelm, and Llah Vrin of the British Library helped me with Earth research. When writing about times so far in the past it’s essential to consider the prosaic as well as the romantic, for which I am eternally indebted to CORYONLINE who can actually remember some of the first contacts.
I’m thrilled to share this novel with the worlds, and I’d like to thank my editor PNH2100 for all the time and ergs he’s put into this thing on my behalf.
I’d also like to thank my wife Sophienne, my husbands Soromac and !Tha for putting up with me while I was writing this, and my arapadog Rover. (Yes, I’ve been obsessed with this story for a long time, we called him after the ancient Martian robot.)
And last but not least, thanks to you for downloading this.
(Comment from PNH “Damn it, fulsome acknowledgement data clusters belong in the back of the memory stick.”)
