Hal Duncan, page 54
For the Sumerian section dealing with Inanna's journey to the Kur and Dumuzi's flight from the ugallu, the excellent translation of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld' by Diane Wojkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer (Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, Harper & Rowe, 1983) was invaluable, together with The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld' by Stephanie J. Dalley (Myths from Mesopotamia, Oxford University Press, 1989).
The 'Eclogue' section at the start of Volume Two is, in part, a remix of Virgil's The Golden Age Returns' and The Song of Silenus', for which I drew on J.W. McKail's 1934 translations (Virgil's Works: The Aeneid, Eclogues & Georgics, Kessinger Publishing 2003) and the translations by E.V. Rieu (Virgil, The Pastoral Poems, Penguin, 1949).
For the rewrite of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound woven throughout Volume Two, again I found two different translations indispensable, the Thoreau version (The Works of Henry David Thoreau: Translations, Princeton University Press, 1987), and the more modern translation by George Thomson (Dover Publications, 1995).
Without these works this novel could not have been written, and I highly recommend them to any reader keen to read the source texts in faithful translations, free of all my literary meddlings.
I'd also like to pay particular tribute to Ian MacDougall's Voices from the Spanish Civil War (Polygon, 1986) and to those whose tales are told in it. Having taken many of the details in the last chapter directly from this book of interviews, I only hope that I have treated these veterans' memories with the dignity and respect they're due.
On a more personal level, the members of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers' Circle whose long-term support and critical feedback have helped rein in my literary excesses over the years are far too numerous to mention. While it seems unfair to pick out individuals, I have to thank Duncan Lunan for founding that literary 'anarchist collective' in the first place. I'd like also to give particular thanks to Jim Campbell, my adviser on all things military, and to Phil Raines and Neil Williamson for their steady supply of comments, critiques, cocktails and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. Thanks also to Jeff VanderMeer, who's proved himself a saint in this madman's opinion, and lastly, of course, to Peter Lavery and all those at Pan Macmillan, for letting the scurrying bitmites of my ideas loose on an unsuspecting public.
USER, Hal Duncan
