For

HAYDEN TRENHOLM

and

ELIZABETH WESTBROOK TRENHOLM

Great writers

Great friends

I owe my career as a writing teacher, my connection to Calgary, and so much more to the two of you.

Thank you for fifteen years of friendship and support and for making my world a better place.

Huge thanks to my lovely wife Carolyn Clink; to Adrienne Kerr and Nicole Winstanley at Penguin Group (Canada) in Toronto; to Ginjer Buchanan at Penguin Group (USA)’s Ace imprint in New York; and to Simon Spanton at Gollancz in London. Many thanks to my agent, the late, great Ralph Vicinanza.

I could not have completed this trilogy without the ongoing support of my great friends and fellow writers Paddy Forde (to whom the first volume was dedicated) and James Alan Gardner (to whom the second was dedicated). They stuck with me through the birthing pains right up until the end.

Thanks to Stuart Hameroff, M.D., of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, for fascinating discussions about the nature of consciousness.

Thanks to David Goforth, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Laurentian University, and David Robinson, Ph.D., Department of Economics, Laurentian University.

Very special thanks to my late deaf-blind friend Howard Miller (1966–2006), whom I first met online in 1992 and in person in 1994.

Thanks, too, to all the other people who answered questions, let me bounce ideas off