Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.

Working in Isaac's universe was more of a treat than a challenge.

For years, even before 9/11, I've been trying to warn that the threat from amateur biolabs will ultimately turn out to be far more troublesome than leakage from military labs - perhaps even more costly and deadly than nuclear terrorism.

It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!

It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.

Of all the planets apart from Earth in our solar system, Mars is the most hospitable. Yeah. Right. Better keep my visit short. And yet, despite the discomfort, the danger, I love it here. I love coming back for these imaginary vacations. The sights are amazing.

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about.

Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful, it's tough, it's buried in our mythic, childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure.

Man's heart away from nature becomes hard.

My first years were spent living just as my forefathers had lived - roaming the green, rolling hills of what are now the states of South Dakota and Nebraska.

And when native man left off this form of development, his humanization was retarded in growth.

God never does anything wrong. He knows what is best for me. No man can understand God, or know why He deals with us as He does.

If a white man had land, and some one should swindle him, that man would try to get it back, and you would not blame him.

There is one God, and He made both Indians and white men. We were all made out of the dust of the earth.

Friends and brothers, The Almighty created us Indians. We are as he made us. The Almighty has given to the whites a book to read, and they have plenty of things to work with. The Indian has no book. He cannot read.