Kraken' is a very undisciplined book. That's a gamble. If it doesn't come off, it's disastrous. But there are pleasures, I think, to a meandering lack of discipline that you can't get the other way, and vice versa.

The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.

I'm a very friendly socialist.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

I'll tell you, I've never particularly been a Trek person. I feel about Trek the way one feels about known, vaguely liked, but rather distant members of one's family.

Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.