I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

Starships are all work and no fun.

I write exclusively using computers. Pens and typewriters can fsck right off - I wrote my first half million words in my teens on a manual typewriter (had to trade it for a new one due to keys snapping from metal fatigue) so I am not a pen or typewriter fetishist.

Back before the internet we had a name for people who bought a single copy of our books and lent them to all their friends without charging: we called them "librarians".

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).

Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.

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.'