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I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its record for being accurately predictive is really, really poor! If you look at the whole history of science fiction, what people have said is going to happen, what writers have said is going to happen, and what actually happened - it's terrible.

I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity.

You can never properly predict the future as it really turns out. So you are doing something a little different when you write science fiction. You are trying to take a different perspective on now.

Science fiction is what we point to when we say it.

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

If I want to speculate wildly about the future, I have my science fiction. Anybody who tells you they can predict the future is either crazy or lying.

Science fiction is my way of pushing the imagination onward. It's a way to understand how the world will look in the future.

Most science fiction is based on our knowledge now and uses that to project the future.

What science fiction does is take what might be possible someday and examine what might happen if it were - the drawbacks and the positive things.