Man is a fire-stealing animal, and we can't help building machines and machine intelligences, even if, from time to time, we use them not only to outsmart ourselves but to bring us right up to the doorstep of Doom.

I always wanted to be a writer... 'Critical Care' was my first published work. I was 34 when it came out. I was accumulating 'Critical Care' for years. I would go for a whole year and not touch it. And then I'd go back to it.

The first thing I became interested in in terms of 'Brain Storm' was neuroscience, and that is like saying you're interested in the universe. So ultimately I knew if I was going to handle this in a fictional format, I would have to take a subsection of neuroscience, and that turned out to be the use of neuroscience in criminal courts.

As the financial experts all over the world use machines to unwind Gordian knots of financial arrangements so complex that only machines can make - 'derive' - and trade them, we have to wonder: Are we living in a bad sci-fi movie? Is the Matrix made of credit default swaps?

I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let's face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what's sexy. And men define what's feminine. It's ridiculous.

I work with a charity called Donate My Dress. It's got chapters all over the country where you can donate special-occasion dresses. Prom is a big deal when you're 15 years old, and it enables girls who don't have the money to come in and choose something special.

No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job.

In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine - a machine for making money.