reach into my travel bag and pull out my hacked Palm computer,

Many science fiction writers are literary autodidacts who focus on the genre primarily as a literature of ideas rather than as a pure art form or a tool for the introspective examination of the human condition. I'm not entirely at ease with that self-description.

I tend to work on the principle that much humour relies on cognitive dissonance - on the foreground not matching the background, on the protagonist's response to a situation being inappropriate, and so on.

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.

I was walking around for a week or so trying to remember not to talk about it. And, you know, keeping good news to yourself isn't always easy.

I think that if there's one key insight science can bring to fiction, it's that fiction - the study of the human condition - needs to broaden its definition of the human condition. Because the human condition isn't immutable and doomed to remain uniform forever.