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

2001: A Space Odyssey was a wonderful conundrum when I was a boy, with its giant concepts thrown across the giant screen at Indian Hills Theater. Tha….

I can't point to a moment or incident that made me see that this business, this putting down words on paper, was what I would do for the rest of my l….

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

For honest insight into who you are, don't ask yourself what your priorities are for next week. Ask what your priorities were last week..

I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happe….

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

A community that learns together excels together. We need to form communities that learn together..

A community is a small group working together. Community scales by adding groups, and building connections between them, not enlarging them..

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there..

It has often been said that [...] the Japanese [are] geniuses at taking foreign ideas and adding a unique finishing touch..

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

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 ….

In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to….

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….

A favorite science fiction writer of mine is William Faulkner! It was an idea that came to me once, years ago, and I've never quite been able to shak….

I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn't put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered….

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of t….

I'm the only member of SFWA in Nebraska, but I don't pine away for the companionship of other science fiction writers. I [go] to very few conventions….

This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing.... I've got gray.….

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, bu….