David Brin

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing.

In 'The Transparent Society,' I am actually no radical. I accept that some secrecy is necessary and avow that human beings have an intrinsic need for some privacy.

I find humans tremendously interesting.

Human beings are inherently misled into subjective fantasies, but there's a saving grace. We all have different delusions. Other people don't necessarily share yours, and hence they will help you penetrate yours through the miracle of criticism!

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.

Historically, central planners have generally done a poor job of managing economic resources - this we've known since the time of the Pharaohs.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

The Enlightenment diamond-shaped society, with a huge, prosperous, socially-mobile, empowered middle class, is by far the most productive and creative system the world has ever seen.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.