I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

I used to not back down from a challenge.

Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people.

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