I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel: there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point.

I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency.

One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people.

A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

But beyond a certain scale vast was simply vast.