Triggers

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The gestalt recasts the words ever so slightly: there is indeed grandeur in this view of life, with its combined power breathing now as one, and that, while this planet completes its most recent cycle according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning a new form most beautiful and most wonderful has now evolved.

Acknowledgments

Huge thanks to my lovely wife Carolyn Clink, to Ginjer Buchanan at Penguin Group (USA)’s Ace imprint in New York, to Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Group (Canada) in Toronto, to Malcolm Edwards at Orion Publishing Group in London, and to Stanley Schmidt of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. Many thanks to my agents Christopher Lotts, Vince Gerardis, and the late, great Ralph Vicinanza.

Thanks to my writing colleagues who saw this project through multiple drafts, especially Paddy Forde and Herb Kauderer. And thanks to James Alan Gardner for being there early on and getting me on the right track.

Thanks, too, to all the other people who answered questions, let me bounce ideas off them, or otherwise provided input and encouragement, including: Chris Barkley, Asbed Bedrossian, Ellen Bleaney, Ted Bleaney, Linda Carson, David Livingstone Clink, Marcel Gagné, Shoshana Glick, Julie Marr Hanslip, Larry Hodges, Al Katerinsky, James Kerwin, Brian Malow, Christina Molendyk, Kirstin Morrell, Kayla Nielsen, Virginia O’Dine, Sherry Peters, Alan B. Sawyer, Sally Tomasevic, Jeff Vintar, and Romeo Vitelli. And a tip of the hat to Danita Maslankowski, who organizes the twice-annual “Write Off” retreats for Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association.

Many thanks to Lisa McDonald and Nicole Pokryfka of the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC, and to Bettina Trotter of the Woman’s Hospital of Texas in Houston.

Finally, thanks to Pauline Martin, Librarian/Archivist, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas; to Ian Randal Strock, author of The Presidential Book of Lists; to Zachary Wiita of the office of Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Washington, DC; and to The New America Foundation, Arizona State University, and Slate magazine, which jointly brought me to Washington in February 2011 to speak at their “Future Tense” conference entitled “Here Be Dragons: Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future”—I piggybacked much research for this novel on that trip.

About the author

Robert J. Sawyer’s novel FlashForward was the basis for the ABC TV series of the same name. He is one of only eight writers ever to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science fiction novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). According to the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, he has won more awards for his novels than anyone else in the history of the science fiction and fantasy fields.

In total, Rob has won forty-six national and international awards for his fiction, including twelve Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”), as well as Analog magazine’s Analytical Laboratory Award, Science Fiction Chronicle’s Reader Award, and the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, all for best short story of the year.

Rob has won the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing, Spain’s 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, an unprecedented three times. He’s also won the Hal Clement Award (for Watch, the middle volume of his WWW trilogy) and a trio of Japanese Seiun Awards for Best Foreign Novel of the Year (for End of an Era, Frameshift, and Illegal Alien), as well as China’s Galaxy Award for “Most Popular Foreign Science Fiction Writer.”