Elia Barceló is considered the “Grand Dame of Science Fiction” in Spain and is one of the country's best writers in the genre. That she must be present in this anthology was one of those few immutable facts that were clear from the very beginning. Elia Barceló was born in 1957 in Alicante, studied English in Valencia and Spanish philology in her hometown. Since 1981, she has lived and worked in Tyrol, teaching Spanish literature, regional studies and creative writing at the University of Innsbruck. And she speaks the five most important European languages - English, French, Spanish, German and Italian - so well that the uninitiated can hardly guess which one is her native one. Elia Barceló began writing in the eighties, first science fiction and novels, and then and detective stories, young adult novels, and “mainstream” novels. To date, she has published 12 books, and over thirty stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and this in Argentina, Belgium, China, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain and the USA. In 1994 and 1995, she also wrote regularly for the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais. From the list of her literary awards, we will name only the following: in 1991, she received “Premio Ignotus” from the Spanish Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction for the story “La estrella.” In 1993 she won first prize at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia for her novel El mundo de Yarek. Twice she was the guest of honor at Ispacon, Spain's annual science fiction convention, first in 1992 in Cadiz, and again in 1999 in Santiago de Compostela. In 1997, her novel for young people, El caso del artista cruel, was awarded the Edebé Prize. Her international success continues: her latest novel, El secreto del orfebre (The Jeweler's Secret), was published in 2004 in Germany and Holland. The angle of view of the following story is also international. It is about an old dream: with the experience of already old age, to start life all over again - even if this means simply buying the life of another... (A. Eshbach)