ARTHUR C. CLARKE Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo January 1974-January 1975

ADDITIONAL NOTE

Several expert readers have accused me of grave error by assuming that

Malcolm would pass on the Makenzie defect to his clones. Though I was well aware of this problem (and tried to avoid it by being carefully unspecific)

I did not go into the matter as seriously as I should have done. I am still hoping that some ingenious geneticist will be able to contrive a solution; unfortunately, I doubt if I will be able to understand it.

Meanwhile, for those biologists who refuse to be placated, I can only fall back upon what is known in the trade as Bradbury’s Defense, viz:

One dreadful boy ran up to me and said:

“That book of yours, The Martian Chronicles?”

“Yes,” I said.

“On page 92, where you have the moons of Mars rising in the East?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Nah,” he said.

So I hit him

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Colombo, June 1976

Mars and the Mind ol Men (Harper & Row 1973.)