I've always thought of science fiction as being, at some level, a 19th-century business.

A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.

In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.

2001: A Space Odyssey was a wonderful conundrum when I was a boy, with its giant concepts thrown across the giant screen at Indian Hills Theater. That movie woke me up in ways that I hadn't imagined, and I went searching for book versions of the same drug.

A community is a small group working together. Community scales by adding groups, and building connections between them, not enlarging them.

I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn't put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered experiment in personal abuse.

I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next.