lao-tian: Chinese, “My God!”
leak: Expletive. Refers to an atmosphere leak, as well as urination. Often an adjective as “leaking.”
Medvyéd: Russian, “bear.”
mete: A meteoroid or micrometeoroid.
no guanshee: Chinglish, “no problem,” “never mind.” From Chinese mei guanxi, “It doesn’t matter.”
oyamah: Japanese, “Good heavens!”
peeghole: Chinglish, “asshole.” From pigu, buttocks.
punk: Expletive, generally a transitive verb. Short for “puncture,” as of a hull or space suit. Sometimes used as a vulgar synonym for “copulate.” A punkhole is a micrometeoroid puncture, and can also mean a vagina.
rageous: 2090s teen slang. Short for “outrageous,” but generally used in a positive sense.
Sensei: Japanese, “teacher.”
Shashu: Japanese, “archer.”
suck: Expletive. In addition to its traditional sexual meaning, this refers to the vacuum sucking atmosphere out of a breached ship or suit. “Dirtsucker” is a common slur against Terrans.
tatakai no heiwa: Japanese, “peace of battle.”
Tenshi: Japanese, “angel.”
vack: Expletive. Short for vacuum, as in “vack-sucker” or “vackhead,” or as a verb meaning to expel something into vacuum, as in “Go vack yourself.” Largely interchangeable with suck, but more widely used due to its harsher sound.
zaogao: Chinese, “Damn!” (Literally “spoiled cake.”)
APPENDIX B
Sol System Geography
Bodies are ordered by mean distance from Sol (semimajor axis) in astronomical units (AU). Habitats mentioned in Only Superhuman are listed alongside the bodies or orbital regions they are associated with. This list is far from comprehensive.
Acknowledgments
This is a book that’s been over two decades in the making, and it would be impossible to remember all the people who’ve influenced or advised me along the way. But I need to single out a few people for special thanks. Xuân Stanek (formerly Blair) was a major source of inspiration and a marvelous sounding board in the early years of the process, and I owe her for details ranging from hairstyling issues to the spiritual impact of a difficult childbirth. Thanks also to Angela Gaylor and Nikki Jenkins for inspiring Psyche’s beauty and the sweeter side of her character.
Chester Edwards deserves credit for getting me into comic books. Back in college, he drew me into his ambitious (but ultimately unrealized) plans to start a comic-book company, and I had dreams of doing an Emerald Blair comic series to supplement the novels. Eventually I reworked my plans from scratch, and many of the best ideas I conceived for the comics ended up as parts of this novel. The preexisting comic-book heroes that Chester helped introduce me to have also been influences on this work.
My college astronomy professor, Dr. Michael Sitko, contributed a lot to my understanding of Sol System. More recently, Paul Woodmansee of JPL was a good source of ideas about spacecraft propulsion, and Laura Woodmansee’s book Sex in Space was most informative as well. I owe a great deal to Dr. Gerard O’Neill’s seminal book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, as well as to Winchell Chung’s “Atomic Rockets” website at http://www.ProjectRho.com/rocket/index.html. My understanding of the Coriolis force and its effects owes greatly to John G. Cramer’s “Artificial Gravity: Which Way is Up?” originally published in the February 1987 Analog Science Fiction and Fact. “Orpheus” on the Ex Isle BBS provided much insight into the technical problems of reading or copying the human brain, as well as advice on asteroidal gems. And special thanks are due to Selden Ball and the person who posts as “bdm” on the Celestia Forum, both of whom were kind enough to create asteroid data files for the Celestia space simulator upon my request. Those files have proven invaluable in helping me understand Emerald’s world and plot her journeys through it.
Information on the major asteroids came from multiple sources, including Wikipedia; the site Ceres: The Dwarf Planet at http://home.comcast.net/~eliws/ceres/; The Planetary Society site at www.planetary.org; the article “Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta” in issue #24 of the Moon Miners’ Manifesto at http://www.asi.org/adb/06/09/03/02/024/ast2.html; and the newsletter of the Dawn space probe at http://www-spc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/newsletter/index.html. Information on pheromones came from James V. Kohl et al., “Human Pheromones: Integrating Neuroendocrinology and Ethology,” Neuroendocrinology Letters Vol. 22 No. 5 (2001), 22:309-321, and from the “Smell and Attraction” website at http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/Smell/attraction.html.
Thanks also go to Lucienne Diver for her valuable constructive criticism, and to Raymond Swanland for capturing Emry perfectly in his cover art. Finally, thanks to Greg Cox for believing in this book and letting me share Emerald Blair with the world at last.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ONLY SUPERHUMAN
Copyright © 2012 by Christopher L. Bennett
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Bennett, Christopher L.
Only superhuman / Christopher L. Bennett.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3229-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-6082-3 (e-book)
I. Title.
PS3602.E66447O55 2012
813'.6—dc23
2012019873
e-ISBN 9781429960823
First Edition: October 2012
Only Superhuman Page 37
