Barbary

I’m grateful to Dr. John G. Cramer of the University of Washington in Seattle and “The Alternate View” columnist for Analog Science Fiction and Fact. He offered expert advice that helped immeasurably in the creation of the research station Einstein and, particularly, in the descriptions of what it would feel like to live and work in an environment in which gravity is provided by radial acceleration.

I’m also indebted to the late Gerard K. O’Neill and the Space Studies Institute. The society to which Barbary emigrates grew out of Dr. O’Neill’s proposals for permanent inhabited orbiting colonies, the mass driver, and other practical ideas for allowing human beings to live in space.

— VNM

Author’s Note, 2011

I wrote Barbary in 1986, when security at airports was less stringent than it is today. Will security at spaceports be equally stringent? I hope that won’t be necessary.

I considered revising the text, but once a writer begins revising a published book, there’s probably no stopping.

The book does include one correction from the first edition, replacing a change I originally made under protest. My editor was under the impression that nobody under 21 knows or ever uses any profanity. This isn’t true now and it wasn’t true then, so I changed it back.

— VNM

Author’s Note, 2012

Dr. John G. Cramer kindly gave me permission to reprint his Alternate View column, “Artificial Gravity: Which Way Is Up?” in the ebook edition of Barbary.

— VNM