I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.

Anything can happen in SF. And the fact that nothing ever does happen in SF is only due to the poverty of our imaginations, we who write it or edit it or read it. But SF can in principle deal with anything.

In most conventional novels, God is not allowed to be nuts. Nor are nuts allowed to be God.

Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing.

I have a kind of standard explanation why, which goes like this: Science fiction is one way of making sense out of a senseless world.

SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions.

R-4 got stuck on the First Law. "Can anyone really protect a human being from all harm whatever?" it thought. "No. It is inevitable that all humans must be injured, contract illnesses and ultimately die. The future can only be averted for humans who are already dead. Ergo..." It took a dozen cops to subdue R-4, after his blood orgy in a department store (83 dead, none injured).