I'm pretty catholic about what constitutes science fiction.

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

I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport.

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.

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

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction.

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