How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?
My education and background thoroughly inform my writing.
Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author’s product. The real universe ain’t that way, and neither are my fictive ones.
It’s how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that’s afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.
The three basic material rights – continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.
Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ’enlightenment.
Change is the very fabric of our time.
Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.
Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.
Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.
But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I’ll bet you’ll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.
One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events.
I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.
What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?
We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?
There’s no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.
I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.
Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.
You don’t have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!
The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.