Dedicated to
POUL ANDERSON
When I was young and dumb, I worked in Minnesota logging camps in winter, when the woods were bitter cold. In the summers I sailed on the Great Lakes. Not on deck, where it often was cool, but in the boiler room, where in summer, 110° F. was a pleasant day, and you worked with a scoop shovel and a 50-lb. slice bar.
In those days, despite my addiction to the tools of ignorance—the Irish banjo (shovel) and the Swedish fiddle (crosscut saw)—I was a devoted reader of SF. I (saints forgive me!) gobbled up its stories with scarcely a glance at the names of the authors I was reading. Unless—Unless it was a story I truly loved.
In the summer of 1953 I was firing on the Steamer Hollaway when it tied up at the ore dock in the little port of Huron, Ohio. In dire need of an SF fix, I hurried around the slip into town, to Dickhaut's Drugstore, and returned to the ship with Three Hearts and Three Lions. When I got into it a bit, I knew it was something very special, and looked to see who wrote it. "Poul Anderson" it said. I have been a devoted Anderson admirer ever since.
When Homecoming was first published, I dedicated it to Poul. I'm repeating that dedication here, to a real giant of SF, an author who has written long, written abundantly, and written splendidly.
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Long odds aren't a certainty, they are a judgement. And while they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, the very fact of odds implies that the favorite may be upset. Especially if the underdog's skill and decision pull in help—from a paranoid bystander, for example, or a pregnant witch.