Ideally, I'd like every issue to include a diverse group of stories that meet the qualifications sketched above, but covering a wide range of specific matter and flavour.

Ideally, I'd like every issue to include a diverse group of stories that meet the qualifications sketched above, but covering a wide range of specific matter and flavour.

There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.

Some of the biggest changes that have happened are behind the scenes, in the way we produce the magazine. E.g., much of our production has been brought in-house via desktop publishing.

I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.

I think the international appeal of SF is quite understandable since the kinds of people who like to read it, are, by the nature of the beast, interested in other cultures, of which other nations on Earth are the closest available example.

As for sticking strictly to presently known science, I will simply point out that we have already experienced at least two major revolutions in science in this century alone.

What SF can do better than anything else is show us the range of our possible futures, and what we can do to realize the good ones and avoid the nasty ones.

It's most presumptuous to believe we already know all the answers and will never get any more big surprises.

There are a significant number of people who appreciate what we do, and most of them gravitate to Analog because this is where they can find it. The other magazines tend to share their audiences, which may result in each of them having a smaller market share.

And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come from those backgrounds, so does much of the fiction.

When something hasn't been around much for a while, and one example of it turns up and catches people's eyes, they go looking for more like it - until they get tired of it again.

This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.

Its limitations are those of the physical universe: it won't let you play with some really wild ideas that aren't possible, but are fun to speculate about.

Usually if nobody hates a piece, nobody loves it, either; and a magazine which sets itself the goal of provoking thought is not doing its job if everybody agrees with what it does.

It's easy to imagine ways the future can be ugly and depressing. It's harder, but more worthwhile, to imagine plausible ways we can make it better.

Of course, the way writers think about those things is almost certain to be affected by their own cultural background, and it would be hard to deny that, for whatever reasons, a lot of SF writers come from Anglo or European backgrounds.

Blaming society makes it awfully easy for a person of weak character to shrug off his own responsibility for his actions.

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Almost every month, I have a day where I get stuck in the mud of me. I used to blame hormones and PMS. After I hit 50, I blamed the lack of hormones. But men get stuck, too, so it must simply be the human condition.

The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

A lot of kids do not know my club exists yet. I did not do any big advertising, and that's what I might do in the next two or three weeks, put something in the paper.

An idea is the only level which moves the world.

I have 20 wigs at home that I play with.

Most women would not be happy being me. People say, 'But you're alone.' But I don't feel alone. I feel very un-alone.

In any relationship, when you go through any big change, you struggle to find your new constellation, your new ground. It takes a while to determine what the new relationship between you is.

If youre entering a room for the first time do it the way you would in life look around see how they have the furniture arranged. If your character is meeting another character for the first time meet them the way you would in life.

From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world, a man seeks to find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.

The claim that SpongeBob makes your child dumber is a causal claim. If you do X, Y will happen. To prove that, you'd have to show that if you forced the children in the no-TV households to watch SpongeBob and changed nothing else about their lives, they would do worse in school.

I'd been trying for all of the eight years we'd been married to have a child, and finally I did.

We're showing a situation that these kids are caught in and being forced to do but the violence is not glorified. Most of the kids in there are not wanting to be doing it.

Time heals all wounds but it doesn't change who somebody is. Stop going back to pain.

The principal part of faith is patience.

If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren't enough to hold us steady when the challenges come... We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life's hard times.

When a match has equal partners then I fear not.

I think of 'Liar & Spy' as completely different and actually not at all like a 'When You Reach Me'-type story. I feel like 'Liar & Spy' has a much quieter, more emotional revelation.

There are two ways to go when you hit that crossroads in your life: There is the bad way, when you sort of give up, and then there is the really hard way, when you fight back. I went the hard way and came out of it okay. Now, I'm sitting here and doing great.

Anyone who tells you they don't need to rewrite, they're usually the ones who need it worst.

It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about.

If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.