The smart gels that screw everything up were inspired by the research of Masuo Aizawa, a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, profiled in the August 1992 issue of Discover magazine. At that time, he'd got a few neurons hooked together into the precursors of simple logic gates. I shudder to think where he's got to now.

The application of neural nets to navigating through complex terrain is described in "Robocar" by B. Daviss (Discover, July 1992.), which describes work being done by Charles Thorpe of (where else) Carnegie-Mellon University.

ßehemoth

The theory that life originated in hydrothermal vents hails from "A hydrothermally precipitated catalytic iron sulphide membrane as a first step towards life", by M.J. Russel et al. (Journal of Molecular Evolution, v39, 1994). Throwaway bits on the evolution of life, including the viability of ribosomal RNA as an alternative genetic template, I cadged from "The origin of life on earth" by L.E. Orgel (Scientific American, October 1994). ßehemoth's symbiotic presence within the cells of deepwater fish steals from the work of Lynn Margulis, who first suggested that cellular organelles were once free-living organisms in their own right (an idea that went from heresy to canon in the space of about ten years). Once I'd stuck that idea into the book, I found vindication in "Parasites shed light on cellular evolution" (G. Vogel, Science 275, p1422, 1997) and "Thanks to a parasite, asexual reproduction catches on" (M. Enserinck, Science 275, p1743, 1997).

Sexual abuse as an addictive stimulus

I first encountered the idea that chronic abuse could be physiologically addictive in Psychological Trauma (B. van der Kolk, ed,, American Psychiatric Press 1987). False Memory Syndrome is explored in The Myth of Repressed Memory : False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse by E. Loftus & K. Ketcham (St. Martin's Press 1996).

Acknowledgments

I put all these words together myself. However, I shamelessly exploited anyone I could to put them together properly.

At the start: Starfish began as a short story. Barbara MacGregor, then of the Domestic Violence Lab at the University of British Columbia, critiqued early drafts of that story.

At the end: David Hartwell bought the manuscript; he and Jim Minz editted it. Of course they have my gratitude, but I hope their reward extends beyond such cheap verbiage; I hope Starfish sells well and makes all of us lots of money. (The copy you're holding is a start. Why not pick up others and hand them out to Jehovah's Witnesses at street corners?)

In between:

Glenn Grant took it upon himself to approach David Hartwell on my behalf when I was too chickenshit to do it myself. Major David Buck of the New Zealand Army gave me the benefit of his expertise on explosives, nuclear and otherwise. I was a bit disturbed to learn just how much thought some people have put into the effects of nuclear explosions on the seabed.