I find it interesting to see people - mostly people who are younger than I am - going to considerable trouble to try to reproduce things from an era that was far more physical, from a less virtual day.

I wanted to make room for antiheroes.

As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.

I have this prejudice that trilogies are long, three-volume novels.

I grew up in southwestern Virginia. I was born in South Carolina, but only because my parents had a vacation cabin or something there on the beach. I was like a summer baby. But I did grow up in the South. I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town.

I don't begin a novel with a shopping list - the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.

A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response.