Pearce had been right, Britnev realized.
Perhaps even kind.
The balcony would have been a much better option.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A tumultuous sea stands between a first draft and a published novel, but my journey was eased by the sure hands and stout hearts at G. P. Putnam’s Sons. My amazing editor, Nita Taublib, steered a wise but gentle rudder; her dexterous assistant editor, Meaghan Wagner, showed me the ropes, literally; and eagle-eyed copy editor David Hough spied out the hazards of my own folly. Thank you all. I can’t wait for our next adventure together.
David Hale Smith at InkWell Management is both my agent and my secret weapon, and his team over there has kept a careful watch. Thank you.
I couldn’t have made it this far in life without comrades-in-arms like Martin Hironaga, Mark Okada, Steve Miller, and Scott Werntz, along with too many others to name. My oldest friends, Vaughn Heppner and B. V. Larson, first suggested I take up the challenge of writing a book not too long ago, something they each do more often than anybody else I know, and they do it well.
This past year Anthony V., my reading/math study buddy at Wilson Elementary School, reminded me what hard work really looks like and why books matter. And a shout-out to Ivan Sanchez and the other ’tenders at the tequila bar at Mi Dia in Grapevine, Texas. Research never tasted so good.
I am constantly inspired by my family in ways they will never fully realize, but my wife, Angela, is the person I most want to be like in the world. She is a fixed and constant grace to those around her, me most of all.
ADDENDA
Nikola Tesla was both a scientific genius and a humanistic visionary, perhaps one of the greatest minds in human history. His technical achievements were both prodigious and unprecedented and yet his accomplishments remain largely unknown to the general public. I’ll refer you to the work of Tesla scholars and advocates for further explication of this tragic conundrum.
In 1898 Nikola Tesla won the world’s first patent for a radio-controlled device, which he termed a “teleautomaton.” In my book, that makes him the father of all remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles, which would surely include drones but also missile and robotic systems. Even the Mars rover “Curiosity” bears the
Now nineteenth-century observations about the teleautomaton’s possible twenty-first-century applications are, typically, both anachronistic and prescient. Here is an excerpt from his patent:
Be it known that I, Nikola Tesla a citizen of the United States, residing at New York, in the county and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful improvements in methods of and apparatus for controlling from a distance the operation of the propelling-engines, the steering apparatus, and other mechanism carried by moving bodies or floating vessels, of which the following is a specification, reference being had to the drawings accompanying and forming part of the same… The invention which I have described will prove useful in many ways. Vessels or vehicles of any suitable kind may be used, as life, dispatch, or pilot boats or the like, or for carrying letters, packages, provisions, instruments, objects, or materials of any description, for establishing communication with inaccessible regions and exploring the conditions existing in the same, for killing or capturing whales or other animals of the sea, and for many other scientific, engineering, or commercial purposes; but the greatest value of my invention will result from its effect upon warfare and armaments, for by reason of its certain and unlimited destructiveness it will tend to bring about and maintain permanent peace among nations.
From: “Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 613,809, dated November 8, 1898.” The full original text and diagrams can be found at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website: http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.piw? docid=00613809&SectionNum=1&IDKey=CC2FD2DDACBB&HomeUrl=http://pimg- piw.uspto.gov/ If you use a Mac, however, you’re out of luck. You can still view it through another fantastic website, Free Patents Online: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/0613809.pdf
In an article published thirteen days later in
Referring to my latest invention, I wish to bring out a point which has been overlooked. I arrived, as has been stated, at the idea through entirely abstract speculations on the human organism, which I conceived to be a self-propelling machine, the motions of which are governed by impressions received through the eye. Endeavoring to construct a mechanical model resembling in its essential, material features of the human body, I was led to combine a controlling device, or organ sensitive to certain waves, with a body provided with propelling and directing mechanism, and the rest naturally followed. Originally the idea interested me only from the scientific point of view, but soon I saw that I had made a departure which sooner or later must produce a profound change in things and conditions presently existing. I hope this change will be for the good only, for, if it were otherwise, I wish that I had never made the invention. The future may or may not bear out my present convictions, but I cannot refrain from saying that it is difficult for me to see at present how, with such a principle brought to perfection, as it undoubtedly will be in the course of time, guns can maintain themselves as weapons. We shall be able, by availing ourselves of this advance, to send a projectile at much greater distance, it will not be limited in any way by weight or amount of explosive charge, we shall be able to submerge it at command, to arrest it in its flight, and call it back, and to send it out again and explode it at will, and, more than this, it will never make a miss, since all chance in this regard, if hitting the object of attack were at all required, is eliminated. But the chief feature of such a weapon is still to be told, namely, it may be made to respond only to a certain note or tune, it may be endowed with selective power. Directly such an arm is produced, it becomes almost impossible to meet it with a corresponding development. It is in this feature, perhaps, more than its power of destruction, that its tendency to arrest the development of arms and to stop warfare will reside.
From:
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Published by the Penguin Group
