I have a kind of standard explanation why, which goes like this: Science fiction is one way of making sense out of a senseless world.

To my mind, the best SF addresses itself to problems of the here and now, or even to problems which have never been solved and never will be solved – I’m thinking of Philip K....

I started writing, or rather, thinking, stories as a child, and at that time the reason was very clear.

Tom and I are never in the same city long enough and both between books, so a further collaboration looks unlikely for some time.

I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I’m sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.

We didn’t have a phone when I was a kid, and I was too shy to smash any public phones, and our town didn’t have a pool hall either, so I had to hang out...

I usually like whatever I’ve recently finished best.

Whatever I’m reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I’m writing.

In most conventional novels, God is not allowed to be nuts. Nor are nuts allowed to be God.

The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.

Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

Anything can happen in SF. And the fact that nothing ever does happen in SF is only due to the poverty of our imaginations, we who write it or edit it or read it. But...

People have laughed at all great inventors and discoverers.

Catholic writers constantly have characters struggling against their fates, or trying to divine the meaning of their lives, usually failing.

See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn’t practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write...

I always figure I can have the Midwest one way or the other. Because it’s my background, it ought to be a voice that comes easily.

SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions.

I do write a little SF in my spare time.

The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don’t have much time to read; I hate to waste that time reading what may turn out to be junk food for...