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While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

I read more books for research purposes, whether it's a fictionalized biography of Johannes Gutenberg or a stack of urban fantasies.

My mind has become somewhat like a book. What I mean by that is that when I look at the world, I see it as a story.

The beauty of dystopia is that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds - but we still have the power to change our own.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world.

Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible problems of our times. But I don't think that all books need to have that particular focus.

The highest compliment I can give a science fiction book is that it's 'plausibly surreal' - it manages to feel like a relentless extrapolation from today even as it overwhelms with unexpected consequences of that extrapolation.

I was heavily influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, C. S. Friedman, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, R. A. Salvatore, and James Clavell to name a few, but of course every book I've ever read, whether I liked it or not, has had an influence... I think I am constantly evolving as a writer, but not to mimic anyone else or mainstream trends.