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

You can't really predict the future. All you can do is invent it.

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.

I don't think the scientific method and the science fictional method are really analogous. The thing about them is that neither is really practiced very much, at least not consciously. But the fact that they are methodical does relate them.

I'm pretty catholic about what constitutes science fiction.

The future depicted in a good SF story ought to be in fact possible, or at least plausible. That means that the writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true... and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you.

People as me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.