The programmers have another saying: 'The question of whether a machine can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.'

[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]

A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated?

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes.

Personally, I avoid deus ex machina like the plague - if you have to use one, it means you failed to set up the universe and the plot properly. It's like a whodunnit where there's no actual way for the reader to identify the perpetrator before the climactic reveal: there's no sense of closure for the reader.

My favourite movie is: "Dr Strangelove". (I haven't seen any films released in the past 2-5 years, I'm afraid: I don't do TV/cinema).

Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life.