Pen names have always fascinated me, in part because I understand the professional and economic and even societal reasons to do so.

Once readers and industry professionals have you pegged down as writing a particular type of book, they are less likely to try something new from you if they decided they didn't like the first one.

I think that there's this idea - especially for male readers, but female readers as well, because we're all indoctrinated, right? - where there's this idea that if a woman is tough, it can only be in a way that is still sexy.

Watching the progression and backlash against feminism even since 1970 will give you a serious case of whiplash.

I felt I ought not to be wasting time, and I hurried to graduate from high school to enroll at UCSD. I also hurried to finish college, to go on to higher studies. By the time I was in my teens, I had a strong sense of mission, wanting to discover something important or solve a major problem in biology or medicine.

I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.

Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance.