Change is the very fabric of our time.

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing

When I begin a book, I inevitably discover many things along the way, about the characters, their past histories and the political intrigues that surround them. This discovery process is vital, and I would not prejudice it by deciding too much in advance

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.