I remember Nazi election propaganda posters showing a hateful Jewish face with crooked nose.

I survived only a year in Berkeley, partly because I declined to sign the anticommunist loyalty oath.

In 1934, the American Jewish charities offered to find homes for 300 German refugee children. We were on the SS Washington, bound for New York, Christmas 1934.

In the evenings I studied chemistry at the University of Chicago, the weekends I helped in the family store.

Far too many scientists, including my good friend Richard Dawkins, present science as the truth and present it as factually correct. And actually, of course, that clearly isn't true.

My background is in biology. Before getting into the family business, I worked at the Predatory Bird Research Group at the University of California at Santa Cruz, fundraising for them.

Sci-fi is just as much about social science as technology.

Sharon Shinn is a lover of words and a builder of worlds. She makes science-fiction seem like fantasy. Her characters jump off the page, finding their way under your skin and into your heart.