them, or otherwise provided input and encouragement, including: Asbed Bedrossian, Marie Bilodeau, Ellen Bleaney, Ted Bleaney, David Livingstone Clink, Ron Friedman, Marcel Gagné, Shoshana Glick, Al Katerinsky, Herb Kauderer, Fiona Kelleghan, Alyssa Morrell, Kirstin Morrell, David W. Nicholas, Virginia O’Dine, Alan B. Sawyer, Sally Tomasevic, and Hayden Trenholm.

The term “Webmind” was coined by Ben Goertzel, Ph.D., the author of Creating Internet Intelligence and currently the CEO and Chief Scientist of artificial-intelligence firm Novamente LLC (novamente.net); I’m using it here with his kind permission.

Thanks to Danita Maslankowski, who organizes the twice-annual “Write-Off” retreats for Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, at which I did a lot of work on the books in this trilogy.

Much of Wonder was written during my time as the first-ever writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s national synchrotron facility, in Saskatoon. Many thanks to CLS and its amazing staff and faculty, particularly Matthew Dalzell and Jeffrey Cutler, for making my residency a success.

This book was written in and around my consulting and scriptwriting work on the TV adaptation of my novel FlashForward, and I thank Executive Producer David S. Goyer for his patience while I juggled numerous balls.

The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.

—Sergey Brin, Cofounder of Google