Amanda paused. Molly wiped tears from her eyes. Then Amanda’s hands moved once more. “By passing this law which makes us look beyond our genes,” said Molly, interpreting the signs again, “that great dream of a nation in which all its people truly are considered to be created equal has come another step closer to reality.”

Amanda lowered her hands and looked at her mother, sharing a special thought just with her. She then turned and looked out at the crowd, which was applauding wildly.

Pierre Tardivel’s daughter smiled.

And a beautiful smile it was, too.

Robert Sawyer’s novel The Terminal Experiment won the Nebula Award in 1995, and was also a finalist for the Hugo Award. He has also won Canada’s Aurora Award, the HOMer Award, and the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award.

Rob is best known for his popular Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, the three volumes of which are allegories about the lives of Galileo (Far-Seer), Darwin (Fossil Hunter), and Freud (Foreigner). His other novels include Golden Fleece, End of an Era, and Starplex (which was serialized in Analog magazine).

A native of Ottawa, Rob lives in Thornhill, Ontario, with Carolyn Clink, his wife of twelve years. Together they edited the Canadian anthology Tesseracts 6.

To find out more about Rob’s writing, visit his World Wide Web home page at: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sawyer