The story "Listen to the Angel" was created in the mid-1990s, when Macauley was writing hard science fiction adventures. This work is reminiscent of Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Gene Wolfe's New Sun, and Cordwainer Smith's The Dead Lady of Clown Town. The story takes place in the Confluence universe. The Confluence is a world artificially created around a galactic halo star, far from the plane of the galactic disk, and inhabited by post-humanoids who are descended from animals. And then a research ship arrives with a human crew on board. His mission lasted five million years...