In the future, maybe quantum mechanics will teach us something equally chilling about exactly how we exist from moment to moment of what we like to think of as time.

When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him.

Hand over your responses to the man who triggers them, and you have already lost the battle for self. Look beyond, and find yourself there instead.

Pretty much anything you care to imagine can happen in a fantasy, which in turn means you can really crank up the intensity of the tale you're telling.

I've been accused countless times of writing gloomy futures. But to me, the texture of my sci-fi just feels like an extrapolation of current trends.

Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile. Travel abroad and learn to live in other cultures. That's one of the things about teaching abroad.

Certainly a decade and a half out in the real world, bashing my head against things, probably made me into a more textured writer. It gives you something to write about.