Orphan of Creation (40 page)

Authors: Roger MacBride Allen

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Evolution, #paleontology

BOOK: Orphan of Creation

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But that left me with
another
problem. I couldn’t bear the thought of sending a book out into the great wide world without a dedication, and yet it seemed awkward in the extreme to assign a
new
dedication that, however sincerely felt, might appear to be insincere, to be something merely stuck on to cover up the hole where the first dedication had been. When I dedicate a book, I want it to mean something, and to make it plain that it means something.

I have been thinking about doing this new edition for years, and have been brooding over the problem of an appropriate rededication for nearly as long. Finally, less than a week before I planned to release the FoxAcre edition, the solution, the obvious, utterly appropriate, solution popped into my head: Harry Turtledove. The choice was so obvious that I can’t understand why I didn’t think of it before. There are good and sufficient reasons to dedicate this edition to Harry. And because it is based on things that happened after
Orphan of Creation
was published, and indeed
because
it was published, it can’t be construed as being a second-best choice. The book had to be published first before this dedication could happen.

Back in the spring of 1988, about a week or so after
Orphan of Creation
came out, I got a phone call from Harry, whom I had never met. Still, it was plain even from the tone of a stranger’s voice that something had thrown him for a loop. Harry told me that he had just published
A Different Flesh,
which was
his
science fiction novel about humans encountering another hominid species. The novel was based on stories he had published (in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction
Magazine, as I recall). Since my novel had not been serialized, Harry had no idea it was coming. This meant I was at a slight advantage, as I had known about
his
stories—at a distance. As with many writers, I try not to read something that’s too similar to what I’m working on, for fear of being unduly influenced, and/or demoralized. As I recall, I read part of the first of the stories, and then backed off because the stories were based on a theme that was a little too close to home.

Little did I know how close. What Harry was calling to talk to me about was the quotation from Stephen Jay Gould that appears at the front of the book you are reading at present. Harry, it turns out, had been inspired by
precisely the same words
. Gould’s work had set
both
of us off to explore a fascinating what-if. At the same time, Gould’s work had produced as striking an example of divergent evolution as one could wish for. Harry and I, starting from precisely the same jumping-off point, had told two totally different stories. And Harry had just opened up a book by a total stranger, and there read the paragraph that had set
him
thinking hard enough to produce a book. No wonder he sounded a bit spooked.

I suggested to Harry that we both sue Dr. Gould for incitement to fiction—and hence the new dedication. The lawsuit never came off, but that was how Harry and I met. It was the start of a longtime friendship—one that, I have no doubt, will continue to evolve as the years roll by.

Roger MacBride Allen

Takoma Park, Maryland

November, 2000

About The Author

Roger MacBride Allen
was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on September 26, 1957. He graduated Boston University in 1979 with a degree in journalism, and published his first novel in 1984. From that time to this, every work of science fiction that he has completed has been published. He has written over twenty novels to date, (three of which were New York
Times
bestsellers), two extremely obscure technical manuals, and a modest number of short stories. He is also the co-author (with his father, Thomas B. Allen) of Mr. Lincoln’s High-Tech War,

In 1994, he married Eleanore Fox, an officer in the U. S. Foreign Service. In March 1995, they moved to Brasilia, Brazil, where Eleanore worked at the embassy. In August, 1997, Eleanore’s next assignment took them back to the United States. Their son, Matthew Thomas Allen, was born November 12, 1998. A posting to Leipzig, Germany, made that the birthplace of their second son, James Maury Allen, born April 27, 2004.

At least one more posting is likely to take them out of the country again, but when in the United States, they live in Takoma Park, Maryland, just north of Washington, D. C.

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