Stardance

Acknowledgements

What we’d like to do here is thank all the people without whom this book could not have been finished, as opposed to, but not excluding, that general gang of friends and relatives who kept us alive during its writing; they would have done so anyway, book or no book, and should be thanked in different ways.

Among the former and sometimes the latter are: Ben Bova, Gordon R. Dickson, our agent Kirby McCauley, our editor and friend Jim Frenkel, Joe W. Haldeman, Jerry Pournelle, Ph.D., and Laurence Janifer, all of whom donated information, advice, and assistance above and beyond the call of friendship, all at the cost of working time or leisure or both. It should be clearly understood that none of the above people are to blame for what we have done with their information and aid: any errors are ours.

On a less personal but just as basic level, this book could also never have become what it is without A House In Space, Henry S.F. Cooper’s fascinating account of zero-gee life in Skylab; G. Harry Stine’s The Third Industrial Revolution, which built Skyfac in our minds; the recent works of John Varley and Frank Herbert, who roughly simultaneously pioneered (at least as far as we know) the concept on which the ending of this book depends; Murray Louis’s exquisite and moving columns in Dance Magazine; the books, past advice and present love of Stephen Gaskin; the inspirational dance of Toronto Dance Theatre, Murray Louis, Pilobolus, the Contact Improv Movement, and all of our dancing buddies in Nova Scotia; the lifework of Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Edgar Pangborn, and John D. MacDonald; the whiskey of Mr. Jameson, the coffee of Jamaica, and the music of Frank Zappa, Paul Simon, and Yes.