Children of Ruin: Children of Time [Book 2]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have tapped quite a few knowledgeable heads to put this one together, and in particular I want to thank my team of Special Scientific Advisors, to wit: Maeghin Ronin, Peter Coffey, Philip Hodder, Nathan Young, Richard G. Clegg, Brian White, Katherine Inskip, Andrew Blain, Stewart Hotston, Winchell Chung and especially Michael Czajkowski for additional help with planetary mechanics and the splendidly inspirational Nick Bradbeer, spaceship design guru extraordinaire. I’d also like to thank Peter Godfrey-Smith for his book Other Minds which proved to be an invaluable research aid.

Above and beyond this elite team of boffins, my thanks as ever go out to Simon Kavanagh, agent of agents, and to Bella Pagan and everyone else at Pan Macmillan who acted on the development of this book in the same general way the nanovirus sped along the evolution of the various critters I write about. I could also not have produced this book (or just about anything) without the constant support of my long-suffering wife, Doctor Anne-Marie Czajkowski.

‘If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not . . .’

William Shakespeare, Macbeth