My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

When I begin a book, I inevitably discover many things along the way, about the characters, their past histories and the political intrigues that surround them. This discovery process is vital, and I would not prejudice it by deciding too much in advance.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events.

There’s no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It’s happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I’ve had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam… and I’m not happy to be right in all of those cases.

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author’s product. The real universe ain’t that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing.

I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I’ll bet you’ll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy… in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature.

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

I find humans tremendously interesting.

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.