Children of the Mind

To Barbara Bova,

whose toughness, wisdom, and empathy

make her a great agent

and an even better friend

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My heartfelt thanks to:

Glenn Makitka, for the title, which seems so obvious now, but which never crossed my mind until he suggested it in a discussion in Hatrack River on America Online;

Van Gessel, for introducing me to Hikari and Kenzaburo Oe, and for his masterful translation of Shusaku Endo's Deep River;

Helpful readers in Hatrack River, like Stephen Boulet and Sandi Golden, who caught typographical errors and inconsistencies in the manuscript;

Tom Doherty and Beth Meacham at Tor, who allowed me to split Xenocide in half in order to have a chance to develop and write the second half of the story properly;

My friend and fellow weeder in the vineyards of literature, Kathryn H. Kidd, for her chapter-by-chapter encouragement;

Kathleen Bellamy and Scott J. Alien for Sisyphean service;

Kristine and Geoff for careful reading that helped me resolve contradictions and unclarities; and

My wife, Kristine, and my children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, and Zina, for patience with my strange schedule and self-absorption during the writing process, and for teaching me all that is worth telling stories about.

This novel was begun at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and finished on the road at Xanadu II in Myrtle Beach, in the Hotel Panama in San Rafael, and in Los Angeles in the home of my dear cousins Mark and Margaret Park, whom I thank for their friendship and their hospitality. Chapters were uploaded in manuscript form into the Hatrack River Town Meeting on America Online, where several dozen fellow citizens of that virtual community downloaded it, read it, and commented on it to the book's and my great benefit.