This book is for a number of old pros, who, wittingly or unwittingly, at various times have helped:

Leigh Brackett

Robert Bloch

Alfred Bester

Marty (Hicksville) Greenberg

Gordon R. Dickson

Harlan Ellison

Fritz Leiber

Harry (“Hal Clement”) Stubbs

Compton (“Stephen Tall”) Crook

Avram Davidson

Jack Williamson

and, most especially, to a man who has never heard of me but has had more influence on the field of science fiction than any ten comparable writers,

Mr. Eric Frank Russell

The format of this book is extremely episodic; the action will shift to several different people and events very rapidly, and this might cause some temporal disorientation to those used to reading a straight-line narrative. Therefore, the reader is cautioned to keep in mind that, unless the text specifically says otherwise, a scene-change is considered to be going on simultaneously with the preceding action, and that this is true, regardless of the number of scene changes, until the original characters come up again. The scheme may sound difficult, but it shouldn’t cause problems.

JLC

It wasn’t the fact that Gilgam Zinder’s lab assistant had a horse’s tail that was the oddest fact; the really strange thing was that she didn’t seem to think her condition odd or unusual.

Zinder was tall and thin, a gaunt man with gray hair and a long gray goatee that made him seem even older than he was, and more drawn. His blue-gray eyes, bloodshot and surrounded with darkening shadow, showed his overwork. He hadn’t thought to eat in more than two days, and sleep had become academic.