 Out of around 7000 submissions, it tied for first place and was published 15 February 1982 (according to PtBS's copyright page, in April, not February).The actual story is classic Simmons in its literary allusions, with epigraphs from Ezra Pound's "Cantos"; the protagonist's father is a Pound scholar with an especial interest in the "Cantos" (reading from it to his children), and the premise can be seen as deriving from a line in the "Cantos" as well.The mother of the family has died of some unspecified illness.