While many translations of the Iliad were referred to in preparation for the writing of this novel, I would specifically like to acknowledge the following translators—Robert Fagles, Richmond Lattimore, Alexander Pope, George Chapman, Robert Fitzgerald, and Allen Mandelbaum. The beauty of their translations is manifold and their talent is beyond this writer’s comprehension.
For ancillary poetry or imaginative Iliad -related prose which helped shape this volume, I would especially like to acknowledge the work of W. H. Auden, Robert Browning, Robert Graves, Christopher Logue, Robert Lowell, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
For research and commentary on the Iliad and Homer, I would like to acknowledge the work of Bernard Knox, Richmond Lattimore, Malcolm M. Willcock, A.J.B. Wace, F. H. Stubbings, C. Kerenyi, and members of the Homeric scholia too numerous to mention.
For insightful commentary on Shakespeare and Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos,” I gratefully acknowledge the writings of Harold Bloom, W. H. Auden, and the editors of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. For an insight into Auden’s interpretation of “Caliban upon Setebos” and other aspects of Caliban, I refer readers to Edward Mendelson’s Later Auden.
“Mahnmut’s” insights into the sonnets of Shakespeare were largely guided by Helen Vendler’s wonderful The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Many of “Orphu of Io’s” comments on the work of Marcel Proust were inspired by Roger Shattuck’s Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time.
To readers interested in emulating Mahnmut’s Bardolotous love of Shakespeare, I would recommend Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Herman Gollob’s Me and Shakespeare: Adventures with the Bard, and Shakespeare: A Life by Park Honan .
For detailed maps of Mars (before the terraforming), I owe a great debt of gratitude to NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet, published by the National Geographic Society, edited by Paul Raeburn, with forward and commentary by Matt Golombeck. Scientific American has been a rich source of detail, and acknowledgment should go to such articles as “The Hidden Ocean of Europa,” by Robert T. Pappalardo, James W. Head, and Ronald Greeley (October 1999), “Quantum Teleportation” by Anton Zeilinger (April 2000), and “How to Build a Time Machine” by Paul Davies (September 2002).
Finally, my thanks to Clee Richeson for details on how to build a homemade casting furnace with a wooden cupola.