When I was a kid I loved 'The Curse of Frankenstein ' 'The Creeping Unknown ' 'X: The Unknown.' I love 'Forbidden Planet ' 'The Thing from Another World.' They were science fiction/horror movies generally.

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet.

A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If as some evidence suggests exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life studying them could revolutionise biology medicine and biotechnology.

We're looking at Earth science observing our planet. Also space science looking at the ozone in the atmosphere around our Earth. Also looking at life science. And on a human level using ourselves as test subjects.

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.

I like science fiction and physics things like that. Planets being sucked into black holes and the various vortexes that create possibility and what happens on the other side of the black hole. To me it's the microcosmic study of the macrocosmic universe in man and that's why I'm attracted to it.

Science fiction to me has not only things that wouldn't happen but other planets.

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

It will free man from the remaining chains the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.