Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.
A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science which is considered not quite scientific.
The East Germans first used biomechanics. This meant that rather than guessing about technique and form they could apply changes to athletic performance based on science.
Fashion is more about feel than science.
Except in very narrow cases where there's breakthrough science that needs patent production worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can't out iterate someone who is trying to copy you you're toast anyway.
Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold but the country that they must rely on for support and encouragement.
I think it was this curiosity about the natural world which awoke my early interest in science.
Fantasy is totally wide open all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science you have to first learn what you're writing about.
The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.
There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.
We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.
One of the nice things about science fiction is that it lets us carry out thought experiments.
Experimental science is fascinating but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it and I'll read about it.
Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 elections would have earned their adherents a well-deserved F in any freshman economics (or earth science) class.
I very much enjoyed my career in science. I didn't leave science because I was disillusioned but felt I'd done my bit for it after about twenty-five years.
Learn about the world the way it works any kind of science and anthropology it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea even more than the idea of God I think.
When people think about computer science they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night.
I don't know anything about science.
When I began in 1960 individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition.
We're as clever as we think we are but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time - there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors.
Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless obsessive preoccupation with the parts.
Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is not what ought to be. Science is descriptive not prescriptive it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed science disavows purposes.
Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster which is one of the oldest subjects of art.