And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you.

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.

People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.

In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process.

My mother says that my father truly enjoyed having a son. My two-years-younger twin sisters felt that he didn't quite know how to enjoy them. But I wasn't aware of those things then. So many of my childhood memories involve him. All the excursions into science were shaped by his knowledge and enthusiasm.

There's an awful lot of hanging around when you're doing science fiction. Going down and waiting for them to set up, being told to go back to your dressing room while they change the track and the lighting and so on.

My high school career was undistinguished except for math and science. However, having barely been admitted to Rice University, I found that I enjoyed the courses and the elation of success and graduated with honors in physics. I did a senior thesis with C.F. Squire, building a regulator for a magnet for use in low-temperature physics.