It really helps if you know your subject matter immediately. I find that enormously useful because then you can concentrate on all the usual novelistic things - the character, the plot and so forth - and you don't have to spend an enormous amount of time learning another trade, essentially.

Electromagnetic theory and experiment gave us the telephone, radio, TV, computers, and made the internal combustion engine practical - thus, the car and airplane, leading inevitably to the rocket and outer-space exploration.

Nostalgia is eternal for Americans. We are often displaced from our origins and carry anxious memories of that lost past. We fear losing our bearings.

Seeing the space future through science fiction can be difficult. Much science fiction of the early era, the 1950s through the '70s, took an expansionist view.