I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

Geeks run the world. Condoleezza Rice is a geek, Bill Gates is clearly a geek, many of the big filmmakers and writers are geeks, lots of military people are geeks. Anyone who has heard Donald Rumsfeld talk about military hardware knows they are in the presence of a geek.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

In the field of fantastic fiction, the question of world-building is not uncontroversial. But I grew up with 'Dungeons and Dragons,' so that whole world-building thing is very close to my heart.

I don't believe in private education.

The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.

I thought I knew who Alan Turing was. I've always loved history, and I was actually shocked by how little I actually knew. I was amazed this wasn't common knowledge. Why wasn't he on the front covers of my history books? He's one of the great thinkers of the last century, and he was sort of pushed into the shadows.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.