This is my philosophy since 'Star Trek' and 'Battlestar': You have to be willing to have fandom hate what you're doing or love it and not care either way on a certain level, because you cannot become a slave to their emotion or their vote. It's not a democracy, as I'm always fond of saying.

I started my career at 'Star Trek,' and that had a huge, very vocal fan base.

I think I started watching 'Trek' in the mid-'70s when I was in elementary school, and I was just into space. Somewhere along the way, I started realizing there were really interesting ideas in the show.

What got my interested in science fiction was actually the American space program.

The notion that gaming was not for women rippled out into society, until we heard it not just from the games industry, but from our families, teachers and friends. As a consequence, I, like many women, had a complicated, love-hate relationship with gaming culture.

People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through, and it really helps you out. At the end of the day, it gets you through because you have to reform your relationship, and you have to figure out a way of getting to the future.

The differences between friends cannot but reinforce their friendship.

Relationships are interesting to me. Not just between men and women, but fathers and sons, brothers and sisters and friends.