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

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

The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.

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.

A city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes.

Perhaps the window is not a sun but an asterisk, interrupting the grammar of the sky, with me sitting below it like a footnote.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.