Not merely one of the finest fantasy novels of recent years, but one of the finest ever. Should not be missed

People are certainly impressed by the aura of creative power which a writer may wear, but can easily demolish it with a few well-chosen questions. Bob Shaw has observed that the deadliest questions usually come as a pair: "Have you published anything?" - loosely translated as: I've never heard of you - and "What name do you write under?" - loosely translatable as: I've definitely never heard of you.

Unless we dream the best dreams of which we are capable, the future will be poorer than it might be.

Not merely one of the finest fantasy novels of recent years, but one of the finest ever. Should not be missed

Science fiction is essentially a kind of fiction in which people learn more about how to live in the real world, visiting imaginary worlds unlike our own, in order to investigate by way of pleasurable thought-experiments how things might be done differently.

There are infimal readers, readers who want to read the same book over and over, but will never read the same book twice.

The world is not bound to get better as a result of new discoveries in science and technology, nor is it bound to get worse, there will simply be new opportunities for making it better or worse.