I don't remember ever deciding to become a performer. I just always was. I began performing by mimicking the performers on the new television that first took the attention away from me as the baby of the household. I continued performing to put a smile on my grandmother's face and always considered her when accepting or declining roles.

The assumption that nature is all there is and that nature has been governed by the same rules at all times and places makes it possible for natural science to be confident that it can explain such things as how life began.

The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Now Venus is an extremely hostile environment and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However as I began to research it more thoroughly I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

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.

When I was in Paris all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.

But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was I could not remain ignorant of their import.

In parallel with the development of my interests in technical gadgetry I began to acquire a profound love of and respect for the natural world which motivates my scientific thinking to this day.

Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.