Fantastic fiction covers fantasy, horror and science fiction - and it doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literati.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

Remember the movements that don't look like moving.

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.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.

A lot of geeks are pale, bespectacled, wear dark clothing and don't get out much - the stereotype exists because it is very often true. I could pass for a non-geek but it would be inaccurate.