Several persons deserve thanks and credit for having helped me when my progress was impeded by my ignorance. None of them, however, deserves any blame for cases where I got something wrong. Chief among these is Josh D’Aluisio-Guerrieri (), the consummate modern China hand; his skills at translation and cultural navigation made this book far better than it would have been had I been left to my own devices (I am also indebted to Charles Mann for allowing me to tag along with him and Josh on a trip that was originally intended as a research expedition for Charles’s book 1493 but that I was allowed to, in a small way, hijack). Deric Ruhl saved me from one embarrassing blunder having to do with the workings of the Makarov, then went on to read the entire manuscript and offer extensive and very useful comments about firearms. I daresay he may have invented a new literary niche: ballistics copy editor.
George Dyson helped with fishing boat lore, Keith Rosema with flight plans, and George Jewsbury did a bit of Russian translation. John Eaton and Hugh Matheson helped fill out the picture of British Columbia by cheerfully supplying background information about cat-skiing resorts and mining operations, respectively.
Having put the reputations of the above people in play, I must reiterate that there are places in the book where I may have misinterpreted their advice, or simply chosen to ignore it for storytelling reasons, and so none of them should be blamed for any defects.
Somewhat in the same vein, a word about geography: the advent of Google Earth makes it easy to call up high-resolution maps of any place on the planet and compare them against the descriptions in a work of fiction. Anyone who attempts this with Reamde open on their lap is wasting his or her time. There is an Abandon Mountain in northern Idaho, and something that goes by the local and informal name of American Falls, but I have taken vast liberties with their descriptions here. There is no Prohibition Crick, as far as I know. In short, none of the geographical description in Reamde can be expected to tally with the real world or its high-quality digital representations, and so readers are encouraged to enjoy it as what it is—a work of fiction—and leave it at that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Neal Stephenson is the author of Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon; The Diamond Age; Snow Crash, which was named one of Time magazine’s top one hundred all-time best English-language novels; and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
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