If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. Thats how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today.

Information wants you to give me a dollar.

Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

In a world so redolent with wonder, how can we allow ourselves to conduct our daily lives with so little insight, such absence of dignity?

Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.

People in the Pentagon had colleagues killed and maimed by bin Laden. They're trying to find bin Laden and kill him and his cult. Naturally they consider that a legitimate thing to do, but they're having mixed success at the job.