I hope you enjoyed the story: I consider this my second best work.

It is very hard to succeed as a contemporary fiction writer, because the present is always changing. An author can sign a contract and deliver a manuscript, only to have the story trashed during the publishing process. This story is a prime example of how, in a matter of day's, a project that took months to research can become obsolete.

This story was actually written during the Reagan Cold War Era. During Bush's administration, the Soviet Union (the original enemy of the story) decided to be rude to me, and crumble. This left a great deal of doubt in the minds of literary agents and publishers as to the Russians' ability to carry out a mission of the nature descibed.

Before Clinton's re-election, I considered reconstructing the story to reflect the climate I felt would endure through the millennium. As I began to update the technical aspects of the story, I can across a photograph of a child eating ice cream, and gave up on the idea of resurrecting Bogie.

It seems that in the economcally ravaged, former Soviet Union, the Russian space shuttle Buron has been decommisioned and relocated to Gorky Park. There it serves Muscovites as an ice cream stand.