I would like to say that I have software that allows me to model worlds to a high degree of scientific plausibility. I'd also like to be six foot two and fifteen years into my reign as Emperor of Europa. The simple truth is that past the character's name and a long history of making my own body cover distances, I did very little in the way of targeted research.

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

To improve as a player you need to not only know how you plan to win, but ... how might your opponent disrupt your plan.

Science fiction is really a rather tiny business compared with its giant cousin, which is fantasy.

I don't believe people let things slide away. It's the nature of the universe that everything dissolves into oblivion and by every route possible, but human beings invest a lot of cleverness trying to cling to past events, real or imagined. And because we can't succeed, we get angry and frustrated and feel guilty. Except the Buddhists.

I'm astonished how little fright I have of my own imagination. It really does baffle me that I don't get more scared because I'm capable of thinking up things that are so awful. On any given day I can imagine the worst.

How could anyone survive even a single day, if he didn't feel as if he was, in some little great way, needed?