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Afterword

A reference to Dante’s 4-dimensional geometry, mentioned in ‘Dante Dreams’, can be found in ‘Dante and the 3-sphere’, Mark Peterson, American Journal of Physics vol. 47, pp 1031–35, 1979.

‘Martian Autumn’ is dedicated to Colin Pillinger and the Beagle 2 team. The Beagle, riding ESA’s Mars Express spaceprobe, is scheduled for launch in June 2003, and should land on Mars at Christmas that year.

‘Sun God’ is based on a splinter of fact. Earth and Moon swim together through a sea of objects called NEOs: near-Earth objects, or Earth-crossing asteroids, with orbits similar to Earth’s. Some are rocky, some metallic, others are rich in organics. Some NEOs have orbits which seem too close to Earth’s for coincidence. A small, dim NEO called 1991JW, discovered at Palomar Observatory, tracks the Earth so closely that it has been suggested it may be a Saturn V third stage, abandoned after delivering its Apollo to the Moon, lost and rediscovered decades later. The story is a pendant to my novel Titan.

Of the stories set in the multiple universes of the Manifold, ‘Sheena 5’ is set in a closely related variant cosmos to that of my novel Time; ‘Huddle’ and ‘The Fubar Suit’ are pendants to Space; and ‘Grey Earth’ is a pendant to Origin. ‘Refugium’ and ‘Touching Centauri’ are each set in their own parallel universes within the Manifold. The ideas in ‘Touching Centauri’ are further explored in ‘The Planetarium Hypothesis: A Resolution of the Fermi Paradox,’ Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol 54 nos. 5/6, May/June 2001.

‘Tracks’ derives from an interview I conducted with Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke in July 1999, the thirtieth anniversary of Apollo 11’s first lunar landing. The story is based on a vivid dream Duke had before his only spaceflight.

‘Marginalia’ is a pendant to my novel Voyage. ‘The Gravity Mine’ is a pendant to my novel Time.

I was honoured to win the British Science Fiction Association Award for best short story in 1998 for ‘War Birds’. ‘Moon-Calf’ won the Analog Magazine Analytical Laboratory Award for best short story of 1999, while ‘Sheena 5’ won the same award for 2000, and won second place in the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction of 2000. ‘Huddle’ won the Locus Award for Best Novelette for 2000. ‘The Gravity Mine’ was a Hugo nominee for best short story of 2000.

Stephen Baxter

Great Missenden, UK

December 2001


The Twelfth Album | Phase Space | Acknowledgements