I could have told them that, Ed thought, if they had had the courtesy to ask. That marine was definitely dead.
Then there was someone standing over him. “This one’s dead, too.” It was Dugan from his patrol, redheaded Irish guy from Rhode Island.
That was the crowning ignominy, after all that work. He pushed himself up on his elbows and said, “The hell I’m dead.” He was sure that he was not dead. “I’m Irish,” he added, by way of explanation. It didn’t seem that he could be both.
“Hey!” said Dugan. “That’s Eddie McMurray under all that mud.” He put a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “We’ll send a corpsman up here, Eddie.” He patted Ed on the shoulder again, and then the two marines, rifles ready, walked quickly back down the trail.
Ed twisted his head to watch them go.
Dugan was glad to see me, he thought. That’s nice.
Acknowledgments
These stories were not written by someone working alone in a basement, much as it felt that way at the time.
I thank my collaborators on several of the stories, Michael Swanwick and Rudy Rucker. I thank participants in the Sycamore Hill, Rio Hondo, and Turkey City writers’ workshops and the San Francisco workshop that doesn’t have a name. I thank everyone who offered feedback on specific stories, especially Martha Bayless, Ted Chiang, L. Timmel Duchamp, Andy Duncan, Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, Molly Gloss, Leslie What and Gary Glasser, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kelly Link, Karen Meisner, Pat Murphy, Nick Nussbaum, Peter H. Salus, Ann Sandomire, Nisi Shawl, JT Stewart, and Avon Swofford.
I thank all the people who allowed me to use their names. They are not responsible for anything I made up about them. None of it is true.
For instance, all opinions and hamburger preferences attributed to Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany in the story named for them were invented by me. All trading cards described therein were actually offered by Burger King in March 2005, though not necessarily to Messrs. Swanwick and Delany. Mr. Swanwick does not, to my knowledge, own a chartreuse 1959 Thunderbird.
Protagonists in the Steampunk Quartet — Carmen Machado, Ellis McKenzie Creel, Santosh Philip, and David Gardner and his son Ridley — are real people who bravely volunteered and donated a few biographical details. I thank the authors of the original steampunk stories, who are also real people, for their forbearance.
For “Speak, Geek,” Susan Gossman lent not only her name but her spiffy blue suit, and Mary Kay and Jordin Kare proffered their macho cat Dominic.
I thank all the historical people I mentioned, all the famous people, all the notorious people (you know who you are).
Most of all, I thank everyone who helped make this book a book: Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link, Paul Witcover, and John D. Berry.
It takes a village to raise a book. None of the parts you don’t like is their fault in any way.
If I’ve forgotten anyone, I plead insanity.
— Eileen Gunn
About the author
Eileen Gunn is a writer and editor. Her fiction has received the Nebula Award in the United States and the Sense of Gender Award in Japan, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Philip K. Dick, and World Fantasy awards, and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. award. She was the editor/publisher of the edgy and influential Infinite Matrix webzine (2001–2008), and on dark nights can hear it stomping about in the attic. She also edited, with L. Timmel Duchamp, The WisCon Chronicles 2: Provocative essays on feminism, race, revolution, and the future.
Originally from the Boston area, she has lived in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, and now makes her home in Seattle, with her husband, typographer and book designer John D. Berry. She has an extensive background in technology advertising, and was Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion at Microsoft in the mid-1980s; her stories sometimes draw on her understanding of the Byzantine dynamics of the corporate workplace. Gunn retired in 2010 from the board of directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop after twenty-two years of service, and is presently at work on a novel.