In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.
I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can’t have machines that exhibit consciousness.
Even in my side of the world, I’ve been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it’s gone from being a gentlemen’s club to being a few big players, and it’s very corporatised.
There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
I wouldn’t like to be a character in one of my books!
Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.
In so much of politics you’re not allowed to disagree with what’s been agreed.
I’m an only child so am happy with my own company and I don’t really get lonely.
A lot of what the ‘Culture’ is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.
I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There’s not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.
I love writing and can’t imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn’t be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.
I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn’t have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.
I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you’re frightened of is to make fun of it. That’s why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds.
Here, in the bare dark face of night A calm unhurried eye draws sight We see in what we think we fear The cloudings of our thought made clear.
I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
If you have any helpful suggestions I’d be pleased to hear them. If all you can do is make snide insinuations then it would probably benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your prodigious wit on someone with the spare time to give them the consideration they doubtless deserve.
I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.