I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.

Socialism and SF are the two most fundamental influences in my life.

I couldn't tell if I was perspicacious or paranoid.

I feel fantastically geeky. [But] I'm not one of those people who's enormously proud of being a geek, but nor am I particularly ashamed of it.

I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.