“Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.”

“Science fiction inspires scientists, but it doesn't exist to dictate what our future should look like. Great science fiction is fun to read and it makes you think, period. Claiming anything more than that is dicey. Grand visions of the future were more prevalent in the golden-age science fiction, but all fiction is a reflection of the current times. As science moves more quickly, the horizon of science fiction tends to recede closer to the present.”

“Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.”

“Celestials is a soapy space opera. Perhaps a spacey soap opera.”

“I stoped reading science fiction once I saw that the UFO was real. It became science fact that just hasn't been proven yet.”

“Science fiction is the arena of the not-yet, and every science fiction story has this element of not-yet-ness — usually a bit of technology or a scientific discovery that we don't know about in the real world of the present but that might be a possibility in the future.”