I grew up a really nerdy kid. I read science fiction and fantasy voraciously, for the first 16 years of my life. I read a lot of classic Cold War science fiction, which is much of the best science fiction, so I speak the language well, which is a commodity that's not easy to come by in Hollywood.

An X-wing fighter flies like an airplane. If you look at the physics, it's actually quite impossible.

Real space movies have to involve zero gravity and a world without up or down.

It is true that, with TV, a writer gets a great deal more respect.

Directing offers you the hope that your vision will reach the screen, unmolested and intact. Therefore, it's tantalizing to all writers.

Real vectoring in space, real orbital mechanics, is very counterintuitive, very strange, and very hard to render. It's expensive, and there's a learning curve. Some of it is about raising audience literacy to the point where they understand that.

I'd wanted to be a writer since I was knee-high. Once I knew that books were written by people and didn't just happen, it was obviously that I would write them, too.