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>> Prelude Ashley McConnell Summary from Backcover: HERE'S HOW IT ALL BEGAN! Dr. Sam Becket wasn't always a leaper. And Admiral Al Calavicci wasn't always a holographic image. In 1993, at Stallion's Gate, New Mexico, Sam and Al were ordinary men with extraordinary ambitions ... Project Quantum Leap was only a dream. What was the secret that made Ziggy much more than a machine? Why did Sam really want to travel in time? Where was Al that fateful winter night? And who almost destroyed the dream before it began? The answers are just a leap away ... ISBN: #0-7522-0929-9 (UK) #0-441-00076-2 (USA) Copyright: 1994 by MCA Publishing Rights Printing History: First published in the UK in 1994 by Boxtree Limited Pages: 247 Cover Art: Keith Birdsong Author's Note: I would like to thank Lisa Winters for Providing the title of this book and awkward details, Linda Young for reminding me of the meaning of the Vietnam Memorial to a hero who lost his brother in that conflict, and Patham Ed and Claire from Genie's Medical RT for details about cell cultures. Special thanks also go to Claudia DeGailler for invaluable and voluminous research on Navy retirement ceremonies, Ginjer Buchanan for excellent suggestions and more awkward details, and Charlie Grant, who traded the earthquake for gravity. Any mistakes that appear in this work are mine, not theirs. Synchronicity happens: the August 1992 issue of Discover magazine featured an article about Masuo Aizawa's work at the Tokyo Institute of Technology on combining nerve cells with electronics. My conception of Ziggy as a neural "hybrid computer" predated this article by over a year, and Ziggy is, of course, several generations beyond Aizawa's work, but it's fun - and a bit disconcerting - to find yourself writing science fiction when you thought it was fantasy. Several fans have noted a discrepancy between the Quantum Leap books as I write them and the series as it's presented on television, to wit: in the series, Sam's body Leaped, and the person he replaced appears in the Waiting Room. In the books, Sam's mind Leaps and his body stays home, to be occupied by the mind of the person he replaces. All I will say in defense of this is that in the first season of the series, the distinction wasn't clear, and I made my choices based on the inherent dramatic opportunities involved, and have remained consistent with them thereafter. It may help the determined purist to consider the books an alternate-universe version of "Quantum Leap." In that spirit, therefore, one might take Prelude to be the story, not of "how things happened," but one version of how things might have been... Date: Summer, 1990 Spring, 1993 Spring, 1995 Leapee's Name: no one leaping here Excerpt: "Did you review those cost projections I left with you yesterday?" Al asked. Sam blinked. "And I've got a sheaf of résumés for that administrative assistant job." Sam blinked. "Santa Claus is coming in for a landing at oh-five-hundred hours." "It's not Christmas," Sam said at last. "He's not due for another eight months." His gaze shifted from middle distance to Al, and the corner of his mouth twitched, acknowledging the joke. But a moment later, the nascent smile was gone. "Al, I want to look at those drawings for E wing again. We might want to have one of the geologists look at it, see if there's a problem." "A problem? What kind of a problem?" "I'm not sure. Those tunnels shouldn't cost so much, we seem to be rebuilding every time we turn around. Have you looked at the printouts since you got back?" Al shook his head. Sam got to his feet and stretched again, reaching up and almost brushing his fingertips against the ceiling. "Come on, let's go look." |