I'm fascinated by artificial intelligence.

Wormholes don't exist because the only way they would exist is if they were seeded with exotic material created by an intelligence far beyond our own. Something would have to make one.

My earliest memories are making little Super 8 films - or watching my brother make stop-motion space spectaculars.

Look at anyone's bookcase at home, no matter how modest, and you're going to find a book that contains wisdom or ideas or a language that's at least a thousand years old. And the idea that humans have created a mechanism to time travel, to hurl ideas into the future, it sort of bookends. Books are a time machine.

I've always wanted to write science fiction. It was one of my first loves, and I knew if I became a writer someday I'd probably write something in the science fiction vein, but I hesitated for a long while because it's such well-trod ground.

I love the Victorian era, and I always have, but I had a leg up on the writing because I was familiar with a lot of the science from the Victorian era. And that led to a massive interest in the science of this time of history.

When you start a company, it's more an art than a science because it's totally unknown. Instead of solving high-profile problems, try to solve something that's deeply personal to you. Ideally, if you're an ordinary person and you've just solved your problem, you might have solved the problem for millions of people.

After briefly considering whether to study biology or medicine, I opted for medicine and initiated my studies at the University of Bonn. The first two years were particularly hard, since I simultaneously decided to attend lectures and courses in biology as well.