The Trade of Queens

Acknowledgments

The Trade of Queens is the sixth book in an ongoing series—and the final one in this story line. It wouldn’t exist without help from a multitude of people; no novelist works in a creative vacuum, and whatever we do, we owe a debt both to the giants upon whose shoulders we stand, and to our test readers and editors. Giants first: This book—indeed, this whole series—would not have happened if I hadn’t read the works of H. Beam Piper and Roger Zelazny.

But literary giants aren’t the only folks I want to thank. This series wouldn’t have been written without the intervention of several other people. My agent, Caitlin Blaisdell, nudged me to make a radical change of direction from my previous novels. David Hartwell and Tom Doherty of Tor encouraged me further, and the editorial process benefited from the valuable assistance of Moshe Feder and Stacy Hague-Hill, not to mention Tor’s outside copy editors. My wife, Karen, lent me her own inimitable support while I worked on the series. Other friends and critics helped me in one way or another; I’d like to single out for their contributions my father; also Steve Glover, Andrew Wilson, Robert “Nojay” Sneddon, Cory Doctorow, Sydney Webb, and James Nicoll. Thank you all. And then there is my army of test readers, who went over early drafts of the manuscript, asking awkward questions: Soon Lee, Charles Petit, Hugh Hancock, Martin Page, Emmet O’Brien, Dan Ritter, Erik Olson, Stephen Harris, Larry Schoen, Fragano Ledgister, Luna Black, Cat Faber, Lakeland Dawn, Harry Payne, Marcus Rowland, Carlos Wu, Doug Muir, Tom Womack, Zane Bruce, Jeff Wilson, and others—so many I’ve lost track of them, for which I can only apologize. Thank you all!

Finally, I’d like to thank the Office of the Under-Secretary of Defense for inviting me to talk at the Highlands Forum in Washington, D.C., thereby giving me the opportunity to do my reconnaissance.