Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories.

I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey.

This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's on its best day is a crude art. We make mistakes I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.

Politicians should read science fiction not westerns and detective stories.

Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

We all had lots of stories of our sad experiences - they mourned the death of my wife with me - but we were hopeful that the children would return.

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

So far at least I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.