Chrysalis

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If any single person — myself included — is responsible for seeing this book into print, it’s my long-time editor and friend, Jason Kaufman. Jason read, advised, suggested, waited patiently, helped steer the story through an abrupt early course change, read again, waited almost as patiently, and then — after a brief but exhausting late-game period of absorbing several new inspirations of mine — deftly edited the final manuscript with microsurgical skill.

Many others contributed to the development of the novel — more than I can remember or name. My particular thanks to my writing partner, Douglas Preston; my agent, Eric Simonoff; Patrick Allocco; numerous research clinicians, surgeons, and pharmacologists who declined to be named — and of course my family, Luchie and Veronica. If Jason coaxed the book into being, it was my wife and daughter who kept the corpus that conceived and wrote it alive and, arguably, sane.

The simulated world made possible by the Omega Velocity, as well as the entities that have chosen to populate it, are of course imaginary. One hopes this does not remain the case forever.