By Eirik Gumeny, from The End of Everything Forever: An Exponential Apocalypse Omnibus

Thanks for reading the Exponential Apocalypse books. They’re done now. That’s well over a thousand screen pages (or, like, seven hundred print) that you can’t unread.

In memoriam, here’s a comprehensive list of everyone and everything that is responsible, in some fashion, for those pages, whether it was because they helped me or inspired me or because I shamelessly ripped them off at some point, be it simply for a subtitle or an actual plot point, consciously or otherwise.

Please note that this list also, conveniently, doubles as a list of things I wholeheartedly endorse and/or recommend, assuming you were looking for that information. (Unless, of course, you’re reading this in the future and it turned out that they were a pile of assholes or Nazis or Louis C.K.s or some-such, in which case I preemptively and retroactively dissavow myself of them and offer my apologies.)

Now, without further ado, my heartfeltiest of thank yous to: adverbs; Ally Malinenko; ancient religions of all kinds, but only for the lore, not the wars and the hate; Army of Darkness (and the Evil Dead franchise generally, even if parts of it don’t hold up so well now that I’m not eighteen); assorted classic rock bands not mentioned by name below; Batman (but, like, the idea of him, not any particular iteration, except for maybe The Animated Series version); Benedict Cumberbatch; Blake’s green chile cheeseburgers; Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson; The Book of Mormon (the play, obviously, not the religious text); Bob’s Burgers; Broad City; Bruce Springsteen; Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson; Chris Cornell and Soundgarden; Clone High almost certainly, in hindsight; Cracked (who I write for now? what a weird world); Community; Dan Telfer’s viral stand-up set about dinosaurs; Danger Slater; Dolores O’Riordan and the Cranberries; dinosaurs; Douglas Adams; Dragonball Z; Dunkin’ Donuts; Futurama; Hamilton; history, broadly; Jamaican ginger ale; Jurassic Park (but only the book and the first movie); Kurt Vonnegut; Mike, Sam, and Laura at Jersey Devil Press; my former jobs; my former professors; old Marvel comics (and the new ones, and the movies, obviously, even after they got all the credit for Lebowski Thor despite him being, y’know, my Thor); New Girl; old movies; People of Earth and/or This Island Earth and/or Mystery Science Theater 3000; Pinky and the Brain; pretzels; Prince; Pringles’ salt and vinegar chips; REO Speedwagon; Shortpacked, by David Willis; Stanford Hospital and everyone who works there; Star Wars, except for Rise of Skywalker, that was bad; Violet and Sarita; The Simpsons, probably; tea; Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; Uncle Paul; werewolves and the requisite lore; Warren Zevon; William Shakespeare; and, of course, everyone that’s ever purchased an Exponential Apocalypse book in the past, that’s reviewed or recommended one, and everyone else who wants to be thanked.

Also, coffee. I’m pretty sure you’re, like, fifty-percent of my blood content at this point and I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.

Also also, a special – and long overdue – shout out to my Uncle Mike, the man who gave me the first three books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series during my first hospitalization when I was fifteen. As cheesy and cliché as it may sound, those books changed my life, and are directly responsible for the Exponential Apocalypse books, as well as, like, everything else I’ve ever written. So, thank you.

And laster, but certainly not leaster, my wife Monica. Thank you for being everything to me, and for me, and for putting up with my shit, both metaphorically and literally. (Cystic fibrosis is not kind to the digestive system, guys.) You’ve saved my life a dozen times over and I would not be who I am today without you. I love you.

And, finally, a quick note to our dogs, Brock and Harvey: It’s adorable when you sit on my lap and put your paws on the keyboard, or your head on my hand, but, honestly, that makes it impossible to type and you failed to contribute anything of value to this or any book.

Thanks for absolutely nothing, puppies.