[Robert J. Sawyer] Science Fiction Writer
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Hugo and Nebula Winner


SFWRITER.COM > Novels > Starplex > Acknowledgments

Annotated Dedication and Acknowledgments

Starplex


Dedication

For Ariel Reich

Every SF writer should be lucky enough to have a good friend who is both a Ph.D. in physics and a lawyer specializing in intellectual property. Thanks, Ari, for helping me launch the Argo on its relativistic flight, work out the Lagrange points for the Quintaglio system, design a chemical structure for a new form of matter, and prosecute an extraterrestrial defendant.

[That pretty much says it. I've known Ari since 1976, and he's been wonderfully helpful to me over the years with the scientific aspects of my books. The particular references above are to the Bussard ramjet in Golden Fleece, the space elevator in Foreigner, the dark matter in Starplex, and the trial of Hask in Illegal Alien — a book that hadn't yet been published by the time Starplex came out.]


Acknowledgments

This novel coalesced from my primordial cloud of ideas [just as a solar system coalesces out of a primordial dust cloud . . .] with the help of:

Editors:

  • Susan Allison at Ace [who commissioned this book from a brief outline on January 24, 1994]
  • Dr. Stanley Schmidt at Analog [who bought the book for serialization, and, as he had with the serialization of The Terminal Experiment, made some excellent editorial suggestions]

Agent Richard Curtis [who sold the book from a brief outline];

Dr. Ariel Reich [whose virtues are extolled above in the Dedication];

Fellow writers:

  • J. Brian Clarke [of Calgary, past president of the Alberta Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada; regular contributor to Analog; author of the novel The Expediter. Brian provided invaluable technical feedback on the astronomy and cosmology in the book.]
  • James Alan Gardner [a great SF writer in Kitchener, Ontario, who did his masters' thesis on black holes]
  • Mark A. Garland [of Syracuse, New York, who critiqued the outline of the book in exchange for me critiquing the outline of his book, The Demon Blade]
  • Jean-Louis Trudel [a French-Canadian SF writer who was working on a Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Toronto, and provided lots of technical expertise]

proofreader extraordinaire Howard Miller [a blind-and-deaf man on CompuServe, who proofreads my books with a Braille reader]

and my usual incisive manuscript readers:

  • Ted Bleaney [high-school buddy, who has read all my books in manuscript]
  • David Livingstone Clink [my brother-in-law]
  • Terence M. Green [Toronto SF writer]
  • Edo van Belkom [Brampton, Ontario]
  • Andrew Weiner [Toronto SF writer, who critiqued the outline]
  • and, most of all, my lovely wife, Carolyn Clink [yes, indeed!]


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