You don't buy into huge car chases or sensates or interstellar warfare, but you can buy into a loving relationship or a father-son relationship, and you can buy into the small humor. If you want to make your fiction universal, go small. That's the best way to do it.

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.

I'm all for crossovers if they benefit the individual books.

The sky was full of stars, and every star an exploding ship.

A movie is a movie and a book is a book, and they have different rules.

We are in a tech-heavy society, plunging headlong into an unknown future. Science fiction is what allows you to stand back and analyze the impact of that and put it in context of how it affects people.

I also like to look at the dynamic that takes place between religion and science because, in a way, both are asking the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? The methodologies are diametrically opposed, but their motivation is the same; the wellspring is the same in both cases.