Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.

I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them.

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others