I am gratefully indebted to Leon Robinson and Brian Mitchell, who provided me with inspiration, encouragement and good ideas, to Mike Grant, who published my early efforts in his late lamented small-press magazine The Heliograph, and to Liz Cross, Kirsten Skidmore and Holly Skeet, without whose patience, enthusiasm and sound advice this book would have ended its days in my fireplace as a lot of very neatly typed kindling.
Philip Reeve