The good people who agreed to publish this book asked me to say a few words about each story: where it came from, how it was written. In the trade, we call this the "Where do you get your crazy ideas?" syndrome.

I always like Roger Zelazny's answer. He says that every night he leaves a bowl of milk and some crackers on the back stoop; in the morning, the milk and crackers are gone, but there's a stack of crazy ideas by the empty bowl.

From Joe Haldeman's introduction to "Counterpoint" in the collection Infinite Dreams