Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.

I describe my plots as follows; A character is walking down the street when all of a sudden a piano falls on them. They spend the rest of the story digging out from under that piano. How they dig, how long and how well, this all depends entirely on the character.

I feel SF is going through an experimental phase right now.

Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.

For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses.

Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.