[One of my kids ]is not named after Aldous Huxley. I haven't even read Brave New World!

Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality.

I think more and more people became aware that social media was starting to feel like a more toxic space. And, I mean - quite a lot of incidents of people getting very, very angry about all kinds of things and attacking people.

The logic for me, in writing it is that the different areas or different years are almost like different rooms.

Seriously, if I switched on the TV and they were showing live footage of an army of fire-breathing pterodactyls machine-gunning people to death on the streets of London right outside my door, I'd be horrified, but not entirely surprised, nor any more scared than I already am. I'd probably just shrug and wait for them to smash the door down. We're so screwed, I don't even know what to worry about first.

My theory is that we used to have several personalities, and now we're encouraged to have one online.

While I was thinking about that, the military, I read a book called On Killing, about the obstacles people have to pulling the trigger in combat. So sometimes you just absorb all this stuff without realizing you were doing research.