My personal feeling about science fiction is that it's always in some way connected to the real world, to our everyday world.

When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans.

Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind.

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

I had, of course, no model for that sort of woman being married, but I can make that up as I go along.

Having a mother who had been an aeronautical engineer convinced me that more things should be open to women.