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Contents

INTRODUCTION



This book is a sort of coda to the biography of Dominic Flandry, Intelligence agent for the Terran Empire. His chronicles had occupied five novels and two collections of shorter stories, written over a span of thirty-odd years. They were meant to be first and foremost science fiction adventures, entertainment. Yet I tried, as well, to convey some feeling of how endlessly varied and wonderful the universe is in which we live, and to provoke a little thought about real history and politics. At last the time came for a new generation to take over the saga—but I do not expect to continue it further than here. There is too much else to write about.

You may enjoy a bit of background. Under the pseudonym Daedalus, David E. H. Jones used to publish brilliant speculative essays in the magazine New Scientist. In one of them he pointed out that, were Earth slightly different in certain respects, we would see no horizon. I seized upon this fact to help me design an imaginary world, which it was only fair to name Daedalus. But why would its fictitious discoverers have done so? Well, suppose they called its sun Patricius, perhaps as a religious gesture. In the technical college where I studied, long and long ago, St. Patrick was alleged to be the patron of engineers, because when he expelled the snakes from Ireland he invented the worm drive. Logically, then, the planets of this star would receive the names of great engineers in legend and history. My wife and I had fun with that, although just two of them got into the story.

The book also, in a very small way, does homage to Rudyard Kipling. I hope that the first and the final sentence, especially, will raise a few smiles.

Poul Anderson, 1994










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Framed