Dragon’s Egg

Thanks to:

Frank Drake—he invented them.

Mary Lois—she named them.

Larry Niven—he gave them something to do.

—and David K. Lynch, Mark Zimmermann, Carlton Caves, Hans Moravec, David Swenson, Freeman Dyson, and Dan Alderson, who helped me in several technical areas. My special thanks to Lester del Rey, who took what was practically a pedantic scientific paper and helped me to turn it into something interesting to read, and to George Smith and the Hughes Aircraft Company for giving me the intellectual environment that made it feasible.