Machine Man (serial)

Page 186.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If you just read this whole serial one freaking page at a time, thank you. There were a lot of reasons this might not have worked, and the big one was: I was making it up one day at a time.

You didn’t

I think I asked a lot, for you to come with me on this journey where I spat out one page at a time,

I didn’t know whether this thing could work,

You there. Yeah, you. Thanks.

One of the most interesting parts of this project was the comments: they kept me in touch with what readers thought, threw up ideas, and became a kind of meta-work: “The Annotated Machine Man,” maybe.perhaps. Thank you to everyone who contributed a comment. And special thanks to those who contributed many, many comments, the most prolific of whom were: Pev (still interesting),interesting!), gStein, CrystalR, Toby O, Electrichead, David, Ben, fredzfrog, Stygian Emperor, Mapuche, Chemical Rascal (haiku on demand), coolpillows, Alex, Ian Manka, Felix ,Felix, C Leffelman, SilverKnight, Yannick, dabbeljuh, Abgrund, Alan Westbrook, SexCpotatoes, regtiangha, Neville, Adam, tim, Katie Ellert (“Where’s Lola? WHERE’S LOLA?”), Ajna, Isaac, Joe M., Justin, towr, Morlok8k, Ballotonia, Sander, and Robert Bissonnette. Many times I clicked through to the previous day’s comments with a sense of dread, the growing suriety that everybody had surely hated it, but I was always (almost always) instead met withfound cheers, jokes, and crazy spin-off ideas that buouyed me forward. Before I began, I was tempted to put a warning on the comments page, something like: “Just so you know, being too critical of this thing while I’m still writing it may cause me to lock up completely.” I didn’t do that, and didn’t have to. You were all far nicer to me than I deserved.

Thank you to everyone who tossed me an idea: that was much appreciated even if I didn’t use it, because it helped me clarify the boundaries of my story’s world. The idea I liked the most was from Meredith Course, who educated me about brain plasticity and free-roaming neurons: that one propelled many pages.

I also want to mention Michael Ian Minter again. Now, I don’t want to encourage people to go around goading authors. Particularly not when that author is me. But Minter’s kick in the pants essentially decided me on doing this, and since I fully would have sheeted home the blame to him if it had all gone spectacularly wrong, it’s only fair I thank him now.

Thank you to Jen for her patience with me on those days I struggled with my deadline (“I’m not happy with my page. I have to redo my paaaaage”), and for telling me it sounded like a pretty good idea to begin with. Ditto for my agent, Luke Janklow, who also made sure this fun experiment in real-time fiction didn’t break me financially, by finding fans in Zachary Wagman of Vintage Books and, with Brian Siberrel, Cathy Schulman of Mandalay Pictures.

Max Barry

Melbourne, Australia

December 1, 2009

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