INTRODUCTION
ANGEL OF LIGHT
HERE’S A TALE OF OLD-FASHIONED horse trading in a future that’s not unusual just because the aliens are here, and getting in on the horse trading. Omar Khayyam (as channeled by FitzGerald) wondered “what the vintners buy/One half so precious as the stuff they sell.” I don’t think either party in this yuletide transaction would have asked that question. Nor, I think, would they be likely to want the Moving Finger to do a rewrite of events as they came to pass.
JOE HALDEMAN is a Vietnam veteran whose classic novels The Forever War and Forever Peace have the rare distinction of having won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel of the year. He has served twice as president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stephen King has said, “Haldeman writes with wit, grace and ease. If there was a Fort Knox for the science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there.” His most recent work is the trilogy comprising Marsbound, Starbound, and Earthbound.