Confusion

• Another thing about the calculus is that it was very controversial because it involves adding up infinitesimal quantities to make something, which is an iffy proposition.
• Why do you think people find the religious leanings of great scientists so disappointing? Why should they be mutually exclusive?
  It's reductionism. You have to be able to reduce everything to interactions among particles. You can't have anything other than that.
• What I'm doing here is writing novels, and novels -- never mind what anyone else might tell you -- novels are pop entertainment, and they have to tell a story and they have to engage the emotions.
• So I always make it clear that I consider myself a science fiction writer. Even the "Baroque Cycle" fits under the broader vision of what science fiction is about.
• You can write a minimalist short story that's set in a trailer park or a Connecticut suburb that might be considered a literary masterpiece or well-regarded by literary types, but science fiction people wouldn't find it very interesting unless it had somewhere in it a cool idea that would make them say, "That's interesting. I never thought of that before." If it's got that, then science fiction people will embrace it and bring it into the big-tent view of science fiction. That's really the role that science fiction has come to play in literature right now. In arty lit, it's become uncool to try to come to grips with ideas per se.
• [On fountain pens] I like the fact that it never crashes, you can't lose your work.