I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "science fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide.