But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms.

... all good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live.

Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion

I'm very interested in the evolution of technology, and it's really the idea of artificial life which intrigues me, more than just intelligence - a new, evolving life form arising within our datasphere and coming into living relation with humanity.

Merely to live without a pain Is little gladness, little gain, Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief-- The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.

Once upon a time ... the only autonomous intelligences we humans knew of were us humans. We thought then that if humankind ever devised another intelligence that it would be the result of a huge project ... a great mass of silicon and ancient transistors and chips and circuit boards ... a machine with lots of networking circuits, in other words, aping-if you will pardon the expression-the human brain in form and function. Of course, AIs did not evolve that way. They sort of slipped into existence when we humans were looking the other way.

The pack of media brayed and bellowed outside the house for seven weeks. Sol realized then what he had known and forgotten about very small communities: they were frequently annoying, always parochial, sometimes prying on a one-to-one level, but never had they subscribed to the vicious legacy of the so-called "public's right to know".