Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I've been led astray like that myself at times.

I hadn't given much thought to the prospect of a Hugo nomination at the time it happened, but obviously once you're nominated, winning one seems a bit less far-fetched than before.

I've been taking longer to write stories lately.

Fandom is about fandom, it's a great big social club.

If the whole U.S. was like Silicon Valley, we'd be in good shape. But now, the entire U.S. is not driven by technology, is not driven by innovation.

The same plasticity that allows us to form a reading circuit to begin with, and short-circuit the development of deep reading if we allow it, also allows us to learn how to duplicate deep reading in a new environment. We cannot go backwards. As children move more toward an immersion in digital media, we have to figure out ways to read deeply there.

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.

Environmentalists should like fracking for its relative cleanliness. But they don't. They have made a bugaboo out of the chemicals in fracking fluids, which supposedly can leach into groundwater sources. I'm convinced they're dead wrong. Ultimately, good technology with a cost advantage will win out over paranoia.