Cesar Mallorca's literary streak can reasonably be assumed to be due to his origins. He is the son of the once famous genre writer José Mallorca, whose most famous creation was the El Coyote series, which was successful in Germany in the 40s. He was born in 1953 in Barcelona, but a year later the family moved to Madrid, where he lives to this day. Cesar Mallorque studied journalism, but then began working in advertising, writing advertising texts, coming up with slogans and filming television commercials. Only in the 90s did he begin to write, and immediately with great success: starting from 1991, not a year passed without him receiving at least some award for a story or novel; in 1997, he received four of them. Whatever you take, Cesar Mallorca has them all, and the Edebé Prize was awarded to him even three times. His first novel, La vara de Hierro, was published in 1993, his second, El circulo de Jericy, in 1995, and then everything goes on like this with a periodicity of approximately one year: today there are twelve novels, and the imminent release of the thirteenth has already been announced. He also writes articles and reviews on science fiction and fantasy for Gigamesh magazine. When Cesar Mallorca and his family travel to Spain, they often receive compliments for speaking Spanish so well because they are mistaken for Germans. This probably explains why the following story is what it is... (A. Eshbach)