I was only eight when Sputnik was launched, and at that age the boundary between science and fiction is pretty blurry. Whichever way the process ran, I've been a fan of science and SF ever since.

The biggest fatal flaw in most fictional portrayals of nanotech - what sends those books arcing across the room - is ignoring that the nanobots need energy to do... anything.

Science works as a way to make sense of life and the universe. Hard SF as my preferred fictional genre just feels natural.

The scope of what I have to say determines the length of what I write.

One doesn't just wander unvetted into someone else's epic interstellar future history.

Collaboration is a nice change of pace from the often solitary nature of the writer's craft.

It would help if human experts agreed on the meaning of such basic terms as intelligence, consciousness, or awareness. They don't. It's hard to build something that's incompletely defined.

The medical nanobots in my novel 'Small Miracles' tap the energy sources that the patient's own body provides. That is, they can metabolize glycerol and glucose, just as the cells in our bodies do.

Time travel offends our sense of cause and effect - but maybe the universe doesn't insist on cause and effect.

I do a lot of different things, sometimes at the same time, and it's very difficult to figure out where I fit.

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.

The part of uranium that's fissile - when you hit it with a neutron, it splits in two - is about 0.7%. The reactors we have today are burning that 0.7%.

Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

Faith is like pure eyes that enable us to see a pure and perfect world beyond the suffering world of samsara.

One cannot quite trust the word of potted flowers," thought the butterfly; "they have too much to do with men.

In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.

Face your reality. You, black or white, are not innocent anymore. Either you have the courage to face it or you will go down together with the whole idea of the American Dream.

Ultimately, I want to have a good career and do interesting work

There's something unsettling about being continually sold something.