To my parents, Bill & Donna,
for giving so much down the years
—Griffin
To Professor Stanley Wolpert,
December 23, 1927–February 19, 2019.
Stanley Wolpert was my professor of Indian history at UCLA and the person who introduced me to that immense and fascinating field of the human past. I’ve now written eight novels which are in one way or another set in Indian history—the six-volume Belisarius series which I co-authored with David Drake and the (so far) two volumes set in my Ring of Fire series—and any number of other works in which Indian history and culture figures to some degree. That never would or could have happened without the impact and influence that Prof. Wolpert had on me as a young man. I have been thankful to him for decades and remember him very well, even though I never saw him again after I left UCLA in 1971.
Such is the fate of excellent teachers. They are remembered by their students long after the instructor has forgotten them. Sic transit gloria mundi is usually translated as “Thus passes the glory of the world.” But I prefer to think of it as “Thus the glory of the world is passed on.”
—Eric Flint