They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.

That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction.

My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette.

It's clear that science and science fiction have overlapping populations.

What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?