All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence.

I'm a fiction writer, and fiction is telling the lives of unreal people. But the only way you can learn to do that well is by really understanding the lives of real people.

It's possible that there is a guiding intelligence in our universe. I don't see a lot of personal evidence for an interventionist-on-an-individual-basis-deity. I have friends who very much do believe in that. But I don't.

Science fiction has never been about the future; it's always been about the present day whether it's Victorian England that Wells was writing about or the post-9/11 era that I'm writing about.

Really being able to harness my mental approach has kind of taken me to the next level, and obviously maturing as a player and a teammate and as a person. Those are things that are necessary to achieve success in this game. There's no other way around it.

Basically, most good science in space flight has to do with the behavior of the human body in space. That is where we are lacking info, and where info can only be obtained by flying in space.

For all its bluster, the BDS campaign is most notable, I think, for its lack of success. Trade is booming; tourism is soaring. The media campaign is full of sound and fury, but to the majority of Britain today, it signifies nothing.

All those who are around me are the bridge to my success, so they are all important.