The Power

Acknowledgements

More thanks than can be made to Margaret Atwood, who believed in this book when it was barely a glimmer, and told me when I faltered that it was still definitely alive, not dead. Thanks for illuminating conversation to Karen Joy Fowler and to Ursula Le Guin.

Thanks to Jill Morrison of Rolex and to Allegra McIlroy of the BBC for making it possible for these conversations to happen.

Thanks to Arts Council England and to the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, whose financial support helped me write the book. Thanks to my editor at Penguin, Mary Mount, and to my agent, Veronique Baxter. Thanks to my editor at Little, Brown in the US, Asya Muchnick.

Thanks to a good coven, who saved this book one midwinter: Samantha Ellis, Francesca Segal and Mathilda Gregory. And thanks to Rebecca Levene, who knows how to make things happen in a story and made some exciting stuff happen in this one. Thanks to Claire Berliner and Oliver Meek for helping get it started again. Thanks to readers and commenters who gave me courage and confidence: especially Gillian Stern, Bim Adewunmi, Andrea Phillips and Sarah Perry.

Thanks for masculinity chat to Bill Thompson, Ekow Eshun, Mark Brown, Dr Benjamin Ellis, Alex Macmillan, Marsh Davies. Thanks for early discussions to Seb Emina and to Adrian Hon, who knows the future like I used to know God: as immanent and shining.

Thanks to Peter Watts for walking me through the marine biology and helping me work out where to put electro-plaques in the human body. And thanks to the BBC Science Unit, and in particular Deborah Cohen, Al Mansfield and Anna Buckley, for allowing me to pursue my curiosity about the electric eel to a fuller extent than I could ever have hoped.

Thanks to my parents, and to Esther and Russell Donoff, Daniella, Benjy and Zara.

The illustrations are by Marsh Davies. Two of them — the “Serving Boy” and “Priestess Queen” — are based on actual archaeological finds from the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley (although obviously without bits of iPad attached). We don't know much about the culture of Mohenjo-Daro — there are some findings that suggest that they may have been fairly egalitarian in some interesting ways. But despite the lack of context, the archaeologists who unearthed them called the soapstone head illustrated “Priest King”, while they named the bronze female figure “Dancing Girl”. They're still called by those names. Sometimes I think the whole of this book could be communicated with just this set of facts and illustrations.